Israel has no deterrent against Hamas, Hezbollah: Official

The Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has an underground tunnel system and could launch a larger attack on the occupied Palestinian territories than the one Hamas launched on October 7, an Israeli official said.

In remarks quoted by the Israeli 103FM radio station on Sunday, the head of Israel’s Upper Galilee Regional Council, Giora Zelz, warned that Hezbollah could launch a larger attack on Israel with its underground tunnel.

Zelz said that there was no deterrent to Hamas and Hezbollah, which seems to have the upper hand in northern Israel.

The Upper Galilee Regional Council is a regional council in Israel’s Upper Galilee region, bordered by the Mevo’ot HaHermon Regional Council and the Golan Regional Council, as well as a border with southern Lebanon.

Moreover, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that a number of settlements in the Galilee have been closed due to warnings of antitank missiles being launched from Lebanon.

It said all settlements in the Upper Galilee that are up to 4km (2.5 miles) from the border and a number of settlements in the Western Galilee have been closed. There are warning sirens sounding in the Western Galilee.

Hezbollah said in a statement on Saturday that it had conducted retaliatory strikes against Israeli positions, targeting barracks and gathering sites near the border in response to the regime’s genocidal war on Gaza.

The statement added that a group of Israeli soldiers were struck at the Birkat Risha outpost in the north of the occupied Palestinian territories.

A number of Israeli soldiers were also injured when Lebanese resistance fighters targeted the Bayad Blida site.

Hezbollah launches the strikes in solidarity with the resilient Palestinian population in Gaza.

‘Hamas’s new fighting methods inflicting more casualties’

Meanwhile, Yedioth Ahronoth said in a report that the Palestinian Hamas resistance group has caused more casualties among Israeli forces by improving its fighting methods.

“These days, various reports have been published from different war fronts in Gaza about the use of snipers against Israeli army soldiers, and it seems that Hamas is showing a lot of patience on the battlefield,” the newspaper wrote.

The report comes days after the Israeli army’s much-hyped Golani Brigade was forced to withdraw from Gaza to “reorganize its ranks” after suffering huge losses at the hands of resistance fighters.

Moreover, citing unnamed sources, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation reported on Friday that the regime’s military is “preparing to move to the third phase of the fighting in Gaza in the coming weeks.”

The new stage includes “ending the ground operation in the Gaza Strip, reducing army forces and demobilizing reserves, resorting to airstrikes, and establishing a buffer zone on the border” between the occupied territories and Gaza, the report added.

The bloodiest-ever war on Gaza has so far killed more than 20,000 people, mostly women and children and injured more than 53,000 others, with thousands more believed lost and buried under rubble. The regime has also cut off most water, food and power supplies into Gaza.