UN delegation meets with Netanyahu, Rivlin; Delegation tours border with Lebanon and Hezbollah tunnel.
A United Nations delegation toured Israel’s border with Lebanon on Sunday as part of a 5-day tour to Israel.
The tour was led by Israel’s UN Ambassador, Danny Danon, and the delegation was welcomed to Israel from President Reuven Rivlin’s residence in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the small group Sunday morning after they toured one of Hezbollah’s cross-border tunnels.
Netanyahu spoke of Iran and its proxies, specifically Hezbollah, and its threat to the Jewish state. He referred to a “great shift has taken place in the Middle East. That shift is the rise of the aggressive theocracy of Iran that seeks to conquer the Middle East, eliminate Israel and dominate many other parts of the world.”
Specifically on Lebanon and Syria, Netanyahu stated, “Iran has proxies. One of them is Hezbollah… Iran controls the government of Lebanon.” He added, “It’s important to send this very powerful message just as we stop the terror tunnels coming into Israel, we will stop all the aggression- from Lebanon or from Syria or from Iran itself…”
The UN delegation will continue to travel in Israel and meet with Israeli officials until this weekend.
Mid-January, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced it completed Operation Northern Shield, exposing and neutralizing Hezbollah’s tunnel network on the border with Israel.
Operation Northern Shield began in December of 2018, the IDF announcing at the time that it had been monitoring the tunnels for several years. The tunnel network, which has been funded and supported directly by Iran to be used to attack Israel, has been under IDF surveillance since the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
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