The photo shows Israeli airstrikes against targets in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, on Aug 19, 2024.

Tel Aviv, September 9 (RHC)-- In the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv, a member of Knesset (the Israeli parliament) has claimed that the regime would launch a full-blown  war on Lebanon “in a matter of days.”  Nissim Vaturi, a member of Likud and the Knesset’s foreign affairs committee, made the remarks to the regime’s Kan public broadcaster on Monday.

“There is no other way,” he claimed, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was of the same opinion and that “this is something that will develop in the coming days.”

Such war would feature some strikes against Lebanon prior to a ground invasion of the country, the legislator purported, alleging that the military onslaught would end up making the Lebanese capital Beirut's suburb of Dahiyeh -- a major stronghold of Hezbollah resistance movement -- "look just like Gaza."

Also on Monday, former Israeli minister for military affairs Benny Gantz claimed that the regime had to shift its focus from the Gaza Strip, against which it has been waging a genocidal war since October, to Hezbollah and Lebanon’s border with the occupied Palestinian territories.

“We have enough forces to deal with Gaza and we should concentrate on what is going on in the north,” he told a forum in Washington, D.C.  “The time of the north has come and actually I think we are late on this,” Ganz said, adding: “We are capable of… hitting the state of Lebanon, if needed.”

The regime has been conducting daily attacks against Lebanon since the onset of the war on Gaza.  Hezbollah has been responding with strikes aimed both at retaliating against the regime and supporting the war-weary Gazans.

The regime waged wars against Lebanon in 2000 and 2006 only to be forced into beating humiliating retreats as a result of Hezbollah’s decisive defensive operations.

The movement has vowed to defend the Lebanese soil with all its resources in the event of another one.

On August 16, it reacted to the regime’s recurrent threats of waging a third war by unveiling a new sophisticated underground missile facility.  The facility featured a convoluted tunnel network, missile launchpads, and blast doors opening outwards that could be used for launching projectiles towards predetermined targets.

Less than two weeks later, the group conducted a large-scale retaliatory operation against the occupied territories, using a barrage of drones and more than 320 Katyusha rockets.   It called the operation the first phase of its reprisal against the regime over the latter’s assassination of Fuad Shukr, a former senior Hezbollah commander, who had been martyred during a targeted killing operation staged against Beirut in late July.