In the wake of Israel’s killing of top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr this summer, a number of senior military officials were reportedly ordered to keep a low profile amid fears of a reprisal.
A report Wednesday by the Kan public broadcaster said senior IDF officers, particularly those serving on the northern front, were ordered to “lower their communications profile,” including their use of cellphones, and to change up their normal routines to protect them from possible assassination attempts.
The report came amid significantly heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah following two consecutive days of exploding pager and walkie-talkie attacks in Lebanon, which were widely attributed to Israel.
It also came a day after the Shin Bet revealed that it had recently foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to assassinate an unnamed former senior Israeli security official using a remotely detonated explosive device.
The agency also said Tuesday that the same Hezbollah cell planning that assassination was responsible for an explosion in Tel Aviv in September 2023 that was aimed at killing former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon. Nobody was harmed in the bombing.
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According to the Kan report Wednesday, a number of senior security officials held a meeting where they established new guidelines for senior IDF commanders aimed at keeping them out of harm’s way while allowing them to still carry out their operational duties.
Hezbollah operatives form a human barrier during the funeral procession of slain top Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut’s southern suburbs on August 1, 2024. (Khaled Desouki/AFP)
In late July, an Israeli airstrike killed Shukr, Hezbollah’s most senior military commander, in what it said was a response to a rocket strike on Majdal Shams which killed 12 children.
At the time, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Israel should expect “rage and revenge” in retaliation, vowing that citizens of Israel would “weep terribly” in the days ahead.
In late August, Israeli fighter jets simultaneously struck hundreds of Hezbollah targets in what the military said was a preemptive operation against weaponry that was about to be used in a major attack on central and northern Israel, widely seen as the terror group’s response to Shukr’s killing. The terror group still managed to fire several hundred rockets at northern Israel in the attack.
In March 2023, Hezbollah carried out a bombing attack at Israel’s Megiddo Junction, seriously injuring a man. A senior Hezbollah commander in the terror group’s elite Radwan Force, responsible for that bombing, was killed in an IDF strike in February.
During more than 11 months of nearly daily cross-border fire between Israel and Lebanon, 26 civilians in Israel and 20 IDF soldiers have been killed, as have more than 450 Hezbollah operatives and more than 140 civilians in Lebanon.
The fighting has also displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border from their homes.
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