For the fourth day in a row Israel has engaged in an artillery bombardment near its northern border with Lebanon. Hezbollah responded Monday by setting off a large bomb on the Israeli-Lebanese border.
The artillery strikes have been an apparent attempt to prevent Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah from launching an all-out attack on Israeli territory in the northern Golan Heights. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) expressed concern that the bad weather and low visibility conditions in the border area could give Hezbollah an opportunity to strike. The terrorist group subsequently detonated a large bomb targeting IDF vehicles, however no injuries have been reported. IDF expected a retaliation from the terrorist group since the assassination of Hezbollah’s Samir Kantar two weeks ago.
“The Israelis are worried and they should be worried — along the border, inside Israel and outside of it,” said Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to Naharnet Dec. 27, “the Israelis are hiding like rats along the border.”
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot responded to Nasrallah’s threats Dec. 28, saying “We [Israel] stand ready for every challenge” and that any attack by Hezbollah would be met with “harsh results” and swift retaliation.
Samir Kuntar is considered a legend in Hezbollah’s circles for his attack on an Israeli family in 1979. Kantar was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) at the time when he and three accomplices kidnapped Danny Haran and his 4-year-old daughter Einat in the Israeli city of Nahariyah. Kantar and company brought Danny and Einat to a beach where they killed Danny in front of Einat before subsequently killing her by crushing her skull with a rifle butt. Haran’s second daughter was killed during the kidnapping when her mother Smadar accidentally suffocated her while the two were hiding from the PLO terrorists.
Kantar was eventually caught by Israeli forces and imprisoned until he was freed in a prisoner swap between Hezbollah and Israel in 2008.
“He was a terrorist that never abandoned the way of terror and murder for even a single day,” said Smadar Haran speaking to Jerusalem Post Dec. 28. “The region is safer without him.”
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