Israel’s security cabinet, which is responsible for setting military policy, decided early Tuesday morning to adopt the return of the residents of northern Israel’s border towns to their homes as an official war goal.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement:
The Security Cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes.
Israel will continue to act to implement this objective.
The decision does not formally commit Israel to a war against the Iranian-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah, which occupies southern Lebanon illegally and has been firing rockets, missiles, and drones at Israel since October.
However, it means that Israel is committing to pursue such a war in the event that ongoing diplomatic efforts, led by U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein, fail to resolve the conflict.
Some 60,500 residents of northern Israel, from a total of 74 towns, have been evacuated since October.
Israelis have been demanding action from their government to resolve the crisis. The Biden administration has tried to link a peace deal in Lebanon with a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The other three war objectives are: destroying Hamas’s military and governing capacities; freeing the hostages; and making sure that Gaza can never threaten Israel again.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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