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‘Strategic threat’: Hezbollah attempts to smuggle weapons into Israel

Police say they’ve intercepted and seized some 140 handguns and 20 assault rifles, but believe countless more weapons have successfully reached Israel.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

Terror group Hezbollah is attempting to smuggle weapons into the Jewish State via the Lebanese border, in order to arm Israeli Arabs with “high quality” weapons they can use during a future Israel – Gaza war, according to a report from Channel 12.

Israeli police told Channel 12 that they’ve intercepted and seized 140 handguns and 20 assault rifles at the Lebanese border since the beginning of 2021, but they believe countless more weapons have successfully reached Israel.

Sources called the smuggled weapons a “strategic threat” to Israel.

Police Chief Superintendent Yaron Ben-Yishi told the network that some 95 percent of smuggling at the Lebanese border is carried out by Hezbollah.

He said that the terror group had watched domestic clashes between Israeli Jews and Arabs during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021 with great interest.

Hezbollah “saw the sensitivity surrounding the Temple Mount and they know that on the day that things explode, Arab Israelis will have enough weapons to use them for hostile terror activities.”

The clash in May saw widespread riots in mixed Arab-Jewish cities throughout Israel, including the central cities of Lod and Ramla, Tel Aviv-adjacent Jaffa, and the largest city in northern Israel, Haifa.

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The unrest saw numerous fatalities, including octogenarian Avi Har-Even. The former head of the Israel space program, he was staying at a hotel in Acre (Akko) with his wife that was set on fire by rioters.

Israeli security officials have come to a quiet consensus that the Jewish State was taken off guard by the major riots which occurred in mixed Arab-Jewish and Arab municipalities during the war.

A recent report from Maariv indicated that the IDF will use a thousand miles of dirt racks, rather than paved roads, to move troops and equipment to the front lines in the next war to avoid traveling through Arab municipalities.

Maj-Gen. Yitzhak Turgeman told Maariv that he is “really concerned about…the impact of violent disturbances on internal security and movement of transport convoys.”

Earlier Wednesday, Australia declared that it had classified Hezbollah in its entirety as a terror organization.