The Hezbollah operative who fired a salvo of 20 rockets towards Israel on Friday was identified by the IDF as Ali Kajak, and he had been documented near the border in civilian clothing several times.
Kayak “was near the Israeli border a short while ago in civilian clothes-as is usual for Hezbollah terrorists, wearing civilian clothes- in order to violate international resolutions that bind the Lebanese state,” posed the IDF’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee on Twitter.
هذا هو المدعو علي كجك مخرب #حزب_الله الذي أطلق الصواريخ على المناطق المفتوحة في إسرائيل الجمعة وضبط في #شويا، علي كان قرب الحدود الاسرائيلية قبل فترة بلباس مدني- كعادة مخربي حزب الله- يرتدون الزي المدني ليخرقوا القرارات الدولية التي تلزم الدولة اللبنانية.#حزب_الله_يورط_لبنان pic.twitter.com/SmYXbHtKY8
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) August 8, 2021
“Kajak fired rockets near the Druze village in order to implicate it, like his border tours are aimed at implicating the Lebanese state,” Adraee continued, adding this “this is more proof of the terror party’s disregard for Lebanon’s sovereignty, Lebanese sects, and international resolutions.”
Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the rocket attacks on Friday saying that “at 11.15AM the Islamic Resistance responded to the Israeli aggression by targeting the vicinity of Israeli enemy posts in Shebaa Farms with dozens of rockets fired from woodlands that are far from residential areas.”
The Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted 10 rockets, with 6 falling in open areas near Har Dov on the Lebanese border. The others fell inside Lebanon.
The truck carrying the mobile multi-barreled rocket launcher as well as Kajak and the other Hezbollah militants was later stopped by Druze residents of the village of Shwayya. Kajak was seen being violently forced into the car and is heard saying that he did not belong to the Lebanese Shi’ite terror group.
Though the Lebanese Armed Forces arrested the four militants involved in the rocket fire, Kajak was later released.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday praised the Druze residents who stopped the truck, saying that “There is a very important awakening of many citizens in [Lebanon] against Hezbollah and the Iranian involvement in the country, which in the midst of the severe economic and political crisis there are also embroiling them on the front with Israel.”
In a speech on Saturday evening, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said that the rocket fire had been carried out far from a residential area targeting the Shebaa Farms and that he condemned those who had stopped and filmed the operatives.
“I tell the residents of the non-Shiite villages that we had to use that area in order to target (a specific area of the Shebaa Farms),” he said. “What was worse than the Shwayya incident was the filming of the incident and the distribution of the footage, which inflamed sentiments, and I was personally dismayed.”
“What happened in Shwayya was very, very bad,” Nasrallah said.