20 April 2016•Update: 26 April 2016
By Kaamil Ahmed
JERUSALEM
Any future war with Lebanon will be "harsh" and "decisive", a senior Israeli general warned Wednesday.
Yair Golan, deputy chief-of-staff of the Israeli military, told reporters in Jerusalem that Israeli civilians faced an unprecedented threat from Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which, he claimed, had the ability to build rockets replete with satellite-navigation technology.
"Our enemies have reached new levels of capabilities and the meaning of that is that future wars are going to be much harsher comparing to anything we've experienced in the last 20 years," Golan said.
"In any future crisis, we are not going to see a small war in Lebanon. It's going to be decisive; it's going to be a big, full-scale war; it's going to be with all of the capabilities of the IDF [Israeli military]," he said.
He also claimed that Israel had seen 20 "terror events" on its borders with Syria since the outbreak of civil war in that country in 2011, all of which, he asserted, had been carried out by Hezbollah or Iran-sponsored groups, not the Daesh or Nusra Front militant groups.
In December, an airstrike -- widely believed to have been carried out by Israel -- killed Hezbollah commander Samir Kantar, prompting Hezbollah to fire several missiles into northern Israel.
