'Israel Will Win': Netanyahu Meets IDF Soldiers As Beirut Strikes, Hezbollah Reply Mark Hamas Attack Anniversary

Keeping the pressure on Hezbollah on the Hamas attack anniversary, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asserted that his country “will win” in its ongoing fight against militants in Gaza and Lebanon.

His statement came as the Jewish country’s military launched fresh airstrikes against targets in south Beirut amid escalating tensions in the Middle East. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on Sunday undertook around 150 airstrikes in support of ground troops divisions which have been operating in southern Lebanon since last month.

IDF Col. Or Volozinsky of Brigade 188 said that his forces were destroying large amounts of Hezbollah Radwan forces weapons stored in almost every house, according to The Jerusalem Post. The Israeli military also struck Hezbollah targets and weapons storage facilities in Beirut. Meanwhile, its air force carried out targeted strikes on Hezbollah’s Intelligence Headquarters, command centers, weapons storage facilities, and other sites in the Lebanese capital.

Hezbollah Strikes Back

Lebanon’s Iran-backed group on Monday hit back against Israel. It targeted an Israeli military base near the northern city of Haifa, the third attack on a military position in the area in one day.

Hezbollah fighters launched “a salvo of Fadi 1 rockets at the Carmel base south of Haifa,” late Sunday the group said in a statement, having earlier reported two attacks on another base also south of Haifa. The group dedicated the attack to its leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last month.

‘I am here with IDF soldiers’

Israel is changing its security reality across the board, Netanyahu said on Sunday, as he visited a military base on the northern border close to a week after the IDF began its ground campaign in Southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah military targets there.

“I am here with IDF soldiers at the northern border,” Netanyahu said as he spoke with soldiers from the 36th Division. “A few meters from here are their friends across the border, dismantling the terrorist infrastructure that Hezbollah prepared to attack our [border] communities,” he said.

‘Completely transformed reality’

On Sunday, Netanyahu promised to achieve victory and said his country’s military “completely transformed reality” in the year since Hamas’s October 7 attack, which has left the country fighting two wars. Netanyahu told troops Israel “will win” as it battles militants in both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and prepares to strike Iran, almost a year since the unprecedented attack by Palestinian Hamas militants sparked the Gaza war.

Israel’s army chief, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said that, one year on, “we have defeated the military wing of Hamas”. Netanyahu had pledged to “crush… and destroy” the militants as fighting began last October, but troops have returned to several areas across Gaza where they had previously conducted operations against Hamas, only to find militants regrouping.

October 7 attack

Marking one year since the deadly October 7 attack, the Israeli air force conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating inside command and control centers embedded within the ‘Shuhada al-Aqsa’ Hospital in the area of Deir al Balah

“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence information. The IDF will continue to operate against Hamas in defense of the citizens of Israel,” the IDF said in a statement.

On Sunday, the Israeli military also announced that it had established an exhibition displaying the items seized from Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7. “Since the beginning of the war, the IDF has confiscated approximately 70,000 items of enemy equipment, including around 1,250 anti-tank missiles and RPGs, as well as about 4,500 explosive devices,” it added.

(With agency inputs)