Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared Tuesday that Israeli forces will remain in the security zone inside southern Lebanon until Hezbollah no longer poses a threat to Israel, emphasizing that troops have standing orders to immediately eliminate any danger they identify.

Speaking during a visit to IDF forces operating in southern Lebanon, Netanyahu said Israel’s security policy has fundamentally changed following the war.

“Our insistence is that we do not leave southern Lebanon until the threat is neutralized,” Netanyahu told the soldiers. “As long as Hezbollah is here, armed and threatening us, we will remain.”

The prime minister was accompanied by Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, National Security Adviser Shmuel Ben-Ezra, IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Tamir Yadai, and other senior military officials, who received operational briefings from Northern Command commanders.

Netanyahu praised the troops for what he described as major achievements against the Iranian axis.

“You have done tremendous work here. We have taken the Iranian axis and begun to crush it. We attacked Iran itself—something no one believed was possible—and removed an existential threat.”

Calling Hezbollah “the most important link in the Iranian axis,” Netanyahu said the terror group once possessed approximately 150,000 rockets and missiles, adding that only about eight percent of that arsenal remains.

“That is still significant,” he said, “but it is no longer what it was.”

According to Netanyahu, Israeli operations have killed approximately 9,000 Hezbollah terrorists, including hundreds in recent weeks.

He said one of Israel’s primary strategic objectives has been establishing permanent security zones on the Lebanese side of the border to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding positions adjacent to Israeli communities.

“We are doing this in Lebanon just as we did it in Gaza,” Netanyahu said. “We do not allow a terrorist army to sit on our border. We push them away, and we destroy everything above and below ground that was built to attack us.”

Addressing the soldiers directly, Netanyahu stressed that protecting their own lives takes precedence.

“Our instruction—mine, the defense minister’s, the chief of staff’s, and the deputy chief of staff’s—is to protect yourselves. If you identify a threat to your security or the lives of your soldiers, act. Do not wait. Act. This is an ironclad order.”

Netanyahu also said Israel’s military successes have created an opportunity for improved relations with Lebanon.

“We say to Iran and Hezbollah: Leave. You have nothing to do here. We are two sovereign states that want peace and want to restore security and prosperity to the residents of northern Israel and Lebanon.”

He cautioned, however, that the blows dealt to Iran and Hezbollah “will not necessarily pass quietly.”

During the visit, military officials also presented Netanyahu and Katz with new weapons systems and technologies designed to counter Hezbollah’s growing use of first-person-view (FPV) attack drones.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)