Israel is monitoring the crisis in Lebanon to ensure it does not spill over the border, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Sunday.
“Lebanon is on the verge of collapse, like every country that Iran takes over,” he said at the opening of the cabinet meeting. “The citizens of Lebanon are paying a heavy price for the Iranian takeover of the country.”
Israel is “watching the situation closely… and we will continue to be on alert,” he added.
The IDF and Israel Police prevented an attempt to smuggle weapons from Lebanon into Israel last Friday, which Bennett cited as “one of many examples.”
Security forces detained suspects who had 43 pistols in their possession at Ghajar, the Alawite-Arab village astride the border between Lebanon and the Israeli Golan. An investigation was underway to determine whether Hezbollah was involved, the IDF said.
The IDF and the police have stopped at least five major drug- and weapons-smuggling attempts from Lebanon this year.
Senior Hezbollah official Hajj Khalil Harb was operating a drug- and weapons-smuggling ring across the Lebanon-Israel border, the IDF said last week.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz last week sent the UN Interim Force in Lebanon a proposal for Israel to send humanitarian aid to the Lebanese people amid the country’s worsening economic and humanitarian crisis.
Seventy-seven percent of Lebanese households are unable to buy food, essential drugs have run out, and electricity and gas shortages have become commonplace, the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund reported. The World Bank has said the situation in Lebanon is one of the world’s worst financial crises since the 1850s.
“As an Israeli, as a Jew and as a human being, my heart aches seeing the images of people going hungry on the streets of Lebanon,” Gantz tweeted last week. “Israel has offered assistance to Lebanon in the past, and even today we are ready to act and to encourage other countries to extend a helping hand to Lebanon so that it will once again flourish and emerge from its state of crisis.”
Lebanon is expected to refuse the help, as it did last year after an explosion in Beirut killed dozens of people and Israel offered humanitarian and medical aid.
Tzvi Joffre contributed to this report.