The Hezbollah terror group launched two mortars at an Israeli army position in the Mount Dov area on Monday afternoon, claiming that it did so in response to Israel’s “repeated violations” of the ceasefire deal that took effect last week.
The incident — the first fire from Lebanon since the start of the truce — came after the US and France both reportedly warned that Israel was violating parts of the deal, a charge Israel has denied.
The Israel Defense Forces said that the projectiles landed in open areas and did not cause any injuries.
Confirming the attack, Hezbollah said it should serve as an “initial warning” over IDF strikes on Lebanon during the truce and the “continued violation of Lebanese airspace by hostile Israeli aircraft.”
Senior Israeli officials were quick to condemn the Hezbollah attack, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing a firm response.
“Hezbollah’s firing at Mount Dov constitutes a serious violation of the ceasefire, and Israel will respond forcefully,” he said in a statement. “We are determined to continue to enforce the ceasefire, and to respond to any violation by Hezbollah — a minor one will be treated like a major one.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz also warned of a “harsh response,” writing on X that Israel “promised to act against any violation of the ceasefire by Hezbollah, and that is exactly what we will do.”
A short while later, Lebanese media reported a series of IDF airstrikes in southern Lebanon.
There was no immediate comment from the military.
IDF soldiers patrol the Israel-Lebanon border, December 2, 2024. (Ayal Margolin/Flash90)
Despite the Hezbollah fire and the claims that Israel was violating the truce, the Pentagon said that the ceasefire was still holding.
“Broadly speaking, it is our assessment that despite some of these incidents that we are seeing, the ceasefire is holding,” Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters.
Israel rejected accusations of violating the ceasefire agreement and said that its strikes in recent days have targeted Hezbollah infractions.
The IDF said on Monday that it had carried out several strikes in Lebanon in the past day, following Hezbollah actions “that posed a threat to the State of Israel and violated the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
It said that it had struck several military vehicles operating at a Hezbollah missile manufacturing facility in the Beqaa Valley, and additional vehicles at several sites on the Lebanon-Syria border in the Hermel District, which were used by Hezbollah to transport weapons.
“The IDF is deployed in southern Lebanon and acts against any threat that endangers the State of Israel” the military said.
Cars drive past buildings that were damaged or destroyed in Israeli strikes in Beirut’s southern suburbs Hay el-Sellom neighborhood on December 2, 2024. (Anwar Amro/AFP)
In one incident, the Lebanese army said that an Israeli strike targeted a military bulldozer while it was carrying out fortification work inside the Al-Abbara military base near the border with Syria, wounding one soldier.
The IDF said that it was investigating the incident.
While Israel has insisted that its strikes are legitimate, as they are targeting Hezbollah operatives and infrastructure, the US reportedly warned on Monday that its actions violate the terms of the ceasefire agreement.
US, France said urging Israel to uphold ceasefire
According to Hebrew media reports, US special envoy Amos Hochstein sent a message in which he urged Israel to uphold the agreement. In particular, he cited Israeli drone flights over Beirut.
The Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment on the report, although Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel was “very resolutely enforcing the ceasefire agreement, and every violation is immediately being met with an intense reaction by the IDF.”
The reported message from Hochstein came a day after French diplomatic sources told Hebrew media outlets that France had accused Israel of 52 separate ceasefire violations.
US special envoy Amos Hochstein talks to reporters following his meeting with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri (not pictured) in Beirut on November 20, 2024. (AFP)
The sources claimed that although Israel was acting against Hezbollah’s own violations, the IDF did not go through the proper channels to report the Lebanese terror group’s transgressions to the US-led international oversight body, of which France is a member, as required by the terms of the agreement.
Although France has not publicly confirmed the report, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot told his Israeli counterpart, Gideon Sa’ar, in a call on Monday morning, that there was a “need for all parties to respect the ceasefire in Lebanon.”
Sa’ar, in response, told Barrot that Israel was not violating the terms of the truce, but is instead “enforcing them in the face of Hezbollah’s violations that require an immediate response in real time.”
According to Sa’ar’s office, he pointed at examples of Hezbollah operatives walking around armed, south of the Litani River, or moving weapons.
“Their mere presence south of the Litani is the most fundamental violation. They must move north!” said Sa’ar, according to the Israeli readout.
Health workers waving a Hezbollah flag dig up the coffins of people killed in war and buried in a mass grave, in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on December 2, 2024, ahead of moving them to be reburied in their villages. (Mahmoud ZAYYAT / AFP)
He also called on the Lebanese government to “clearly authorize the Lebanese army to carry out the actions required of it under the agreement.”
Israel will not accept a return to the prewar situation in Lebanon, Sa’ar declared.
The ceasefire that came into effect last Wednesday was designed to bring to an end almost 14 months of Hezbollah-initiated fighting.
It stipulates that the IDF has 60 days to withdraw under the deal while the Lebanese army is to gradually take responsibility for southern Lebanon, and an American-led committee will be established to adjudicate complaints regarding potential ceasefire violations, the military said.
Hezbollah forces will leave southern Lebanon, and its military infrastructure will be dismantled, according to the agreement. The US has also reportedly provided a side letter specifying Israel’s rights to respond to any violations of the ceasefire.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel one day after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught in southern Israel, in support of its fellow Iran-backed terror group, drawing Israeli reprisals and leading to the displacement of some 60,000 residents of northern Israel.
Fighting intensified in late September, with Israel killing much of Hezbollah’s leadership and launching a limited ground incursion on October 1 that has seen soldiers search villages for rockets and other arms held by the terror group, and tackle its terror tunnels and other infrastructure.
Reuters contributed to this report.
