NEWSMAX | Published March 12, 2025
After almost a year and a half of war, a deceptive quiet has settled over the Israeli home front in recent weeks, as ceasefires have largely ended the incessant attacks on Israeli civilians.
However, the Israeli military has been far from idle during this time, earning the country’s much-needed respite through constant vigilance and rigorous, aggressive enforcement of the ceasefires, and precautionary measures against terrorism.
At the moment, the most active front is the one closest to home – in Samaria, the northern part of the West Bank.
Israeli security forces’ large-scale counter-terror operation in several towns has continued unabated. On Tuesday, the forces eliminated two terrorists and arrested 10 others, including a senior leader, during a firefight in Jenin.
According to Israel Defense Forces, the fire exchange erupted when the Israel Police’s elite “Yamam” commando “encountered several armed terrorists who had barricaded themselves inside a structure in Jenin.”
Among those arrested was Liwaa Jaaz, a senior operative in the terror network around Jenin. The IDF said the forces “also located and destroyed two vehicles loaded with weapons intended for use in terror attacks.”
There have been several incidents of stone-throwing terror attacks in recent days. On Monday, an Israeli toddler was lightly wounded by shards when a stone shattered the windshield of a car near the town of Huwara.
On the other side, there have been several instances of extremist settlers setting fires to the cars of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the situation has been highly tense despite ongoing negotiations to extend the ceasefire.
The IDF has disrupted numerous attempts by the Hamas terror group to prepare for a potential resumption of the fighting, including laying booby traps near Israeli forces or observing them and smuggling attempts by drones.
On Monday, the IDF struck a terror cell that operated “near IDF troops in the area of Shejaiya and [attempted] to plant explosive devices in the ground.”
Three additional terrorists were struck in a similar incident on Monday. In the evening, the IDF identified and monitored a drone that crossed from Israel into southern Gaza. Once suspects approached to retrieve it, both the drone and the terrorists were eliminated by Israeli military forces.
The following day, the IDF eliminated terrorists “engaged in suspicious activity posing a threat to IDF troops,” and also struck another terrorist surveilling and gathering intelligence about IDF soldiers in southern Gaza.
In Lebanon, the IDF continues to launch strikes whenever Hezbollah attempts to rearm, recover weapons or rebuild its infrastructure.
Also on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike killed Hassan Abbas Ez-Eldin, the head of Hezbollah’s aerial array in the “Bader” regional unit, the IDF reported.
Abbas was said to have been a “significant source of knowledge” in his field and led rebuilding efforts, including attempts to “rearm itself with new weapons that pose a direct threat to Israeli aircraft,” according to the IDF.
Israeli troops detected and targeted multiple Hezbollah sites storing weapons and rocket launchers.
“The IDF will continue to operate to remove any threat to the State of Israel and will prevent any attempt of Hezbollah to reestablish and rebuild itself,” the military stated.
In Syria, the IDF still holds a buffer zone along the Golan Heights frontier and continues to degrade the country’s military equipment.
On Tuesday morning, the IDF announced it had struck “radars and detection assets used for constructing aerial intelligence assessments in southern Syria” overnight.
“In addition, command positions and military sites containing weapons and military equipment belonging to the Syrian Regime in southern Syria were struck,” the IDF said, adding that they had posed a threat to Israel and were targeted in order to “eliminate future threats.”
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SOURCE: www.newsmax.org
RELATED: IDF says it struck terror targets in Lebanon and Gaza amid ceasefires
Illustrative: A vehicle drives past buildings destroyed in Israeli strikes during the latest war, near the border wall in the southern Lebanese village of Ramia on March 5, 2025. (Mahmoud ZAYYAT / AFP)
THE TIMES OF ISRAEL | Published March 12, 2025
The Israel Defense Forces carried out airstrikes on Friday night in southern Lebanon, saying it targeted Hezbollah military sites. It also struck several suspects in Gaza that it said were acting against Israeli forces.
In Lebanon, the army said it hit a Hezbollah operative and sites used to store weapons and rocket launchers, adding that the strikes were carried out due to the threat they posed to Israel.
The operative was “involved in the rehabilitation of terror infrastructure and directing Hezbollah terror operations in southern Lebanon,” the military said.
“The weapons and the rocket launchers in the military sites posed a threat to the State of Israel and constituted a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon,” the IDF said.
Lebanese media showed the results of an Israeli strike on a car between the southern Lebanon towns of Khirbet Selm and al-Jumayjimah. One person was reported killed and another seriously injured.
The strikes came days after the army carried out a drone strike in the Tyre area of Lebanon, saying it killed a Hezbollah commander involved in advancing attacks against Israel amid the ceasefire. The commander, Haidar Hashem, was responsible for the naval forces in the terror group’s elite Radwan Force, according to the military.
In northern Gaza on Friday night, the IDF said it carried out a drone strike targeting a group of suspects planting a bomb near Israeli troops.
Palestinian media report two dead in the strike in Gaza City’s eastern Shejaiya neighborhood.
Israeli forces are still deployed to a buffer zone along the Gaza border amid the ceasefire, and the IDF has repeatedly warned Palestinians against approaching the area.
On Saturday, the IDF said it detected and tracked a drone flying from Israel into the southern Gaza Strip overnight. In the morning, after the device was picked up by suspects in southern Gaza, an Israeli Air Force drone carried out an airstrike against them, the army said.
According to Palestinian media, two people were killed in the strike.
Also on Saturday, the IDF announced that a tree-planting event planned for Monday morning near the Gaza border had been called off following a fresh assessment of the security situation.
The event by the Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) near Be’eri was to dedicate a new forest commemorating those killed during the October 7 onslaught and in the war. Hundreds of bereaved families were set to participate. The event had already been postponed by the IDF once last month.
The military said that there were no other changes to the civilian guidelines.
In recent weeks, there have been several attempts to smuggle contraband into the Gaza Strip, with the IDF saying suspects on the Israeli side load up drones with weapons or drugs and fly them over the border.
The strikes in Lebanon and Gaza come amid ceasefires on both war fronts, but Israel has said it will continue to act against terror operatives who are in breach of the truces and who pose a threat to its forces.
A November 27, 2024, truce in Lebanon largely halted more than a year of hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, including two months of full-blown war during which Israel sent in ground troops. The fighting came after the terror group opened fire on the Jewish state on October 8, 2023, in support of ally Hamas, which had invaded Israel from Gaza a day earlier. The persistent rocket fire from Lebanon displaced some 60,000 Israeli civilians.
Last month, Israel withdrew all its forces from southern Lebanon, except five strategic points, saying it had received a green light from the US to remain at those posts and citing the need to prevent Hezbollah from returning to the area and threatening Israel.
In Gaza, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and hostage release deal that began on January 19, which has seen 33 Israelis returned. They are now in talks to extend it, though Jerusalem has warned it could soon resume fighting if Hamas does not continue to release hostages.
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SOURCE: www.timesofisrael.com
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