Netanyahu Blames Hezbollah for Drone Incursion
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday a drone aircraft, which flew some 35 miles (55 km) into Israel before being shot down last weekend, was sent by Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah.
In a statement from his office, Netanyahu said during a tour of the southern frontier with Egypt that Israel would “act with determination to defend its borders”, just as “we thwarted over the weekend Hezbollah’s attempt” to penetrate Israeli airspace.
Under surveillance by Israeli fighter jets, it was shot down on Saturday over a forest near the occupied West Bank. Defence officials did not, at the time, directly accuse Hezbollah – who fought an inconclusive war with Israel in 2006 – of sending it.
On at least one previous occasion, Hezbollah has launched a drone into Israel across its northern border with Lebanon. And in 2010, an Israeli warplane shot down an apparently unmanned balloon near the Dimona nuclear reactor in southern Israel.
The Israeli military released a 10-second video clip of what it said was Saturday’s mid-air interception. In the video, a small, unidentified aircraft is seen moments before being destroyed by a missile fired from a fighter jet.
In a statement from his office, Netanyahu said during a tour of the southern frontier with Egypt that Israel would “act with determination to defend its borders”, just as “we thwarted over the weekend Hezbollah’s attempt” to penetrate Israeli airspace.
Under surveillance by Israeli fighter jets, it was shot down on Saturday over a forest near the occupied West Bank. Defence officials did not, at the time, directly accuse Hezbollah – who fought an inconclusive war with Israel in 2006 – of sending it.
On at least one previous occasion, Hezbollah has launched a drone into Israel across its northern border with Lebanon. And in 2010, an Israeli warplane shot down an apparently unmanned balloon near the Dimona nuclear reactor in southern Israel.
The Israeli military released a 10-second video clip of what it said was Saturday’s mid-air interception. In the video, a small, unidentified aircraft is seen moments before being destroyed by a missile fired from a fighter jet.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
