Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz issued a stark warning to the Hezbollah terror group on Friday, telling it to stay out of the Iran-Israel conflict, saying the group “has not learned the lesson of its predecessors.”
“The Lebanese proxy should be careful and understand that if there is terror – there will be no Hezbollah,” Katz wrote on X.
His comments followed a statement by Hezbollah’s leader Sheikh Naim Qassem, who said the group was “not neutral” in the face of Israeli and US aggression and backed Iran’s right to defend itself, adding that it will “act as it sees fit”.
Hezbollah suffered devastating losses in its war against Israel last year, which ended with a ceasefire agreement in November.
As per the ceasefire, Hezbollah was instructed to pull its fighters back north of the Litani river, some 30 km from the Israeli border, leaving the Lebanese army and United Nations peacekeepers as the only armed parties in the area.
Israel was asked to fully withdraw its troops but has kept them in five locations in Lebanon it deems “strategic.”
