Israel has communicated a stern warning to Lebanese Shi’ite terror group Hezbollah against targeting any Israeli institutions abroad in retaliation for last week’s attack on a convoy of senior Iranian and Hezbollah military operatives on the Golan Heights, the Arab-language daily Al-Hayat is reporting on Monday.
The newspaper quoted Western diplomats as saying that officials in Jerusalem sought to convey the message through indirect channels. Israel does not have diplomatic relations with Lebanon.
The diplomats told Al-Hayat that “Israel would hold Hezbollah responsible for any attack against its institutions and nationals [abroad], including areas known to be frequented by Israelis in far-off places around the globe.”
Over the weekend, it was reported that Hezbollah promised senior government officials in Beirut that it will refrain from retaliating against Israel, which it blames for last week’s attack, from Lebanese soil.
According to a report in Saturday editions of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anbaa’, Lebanese government sources said that the Shi’ite group was keenly aware of domestic public opinion and the rising apprehension over the prospect of Israeli reprisals similar to the devastation that was wrought during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
“Hezbollah doesn’t just have courage [in standing up to Israel] but it also has a high degree of wisdom,” a Lebanese government minister and Hezbollah member, Muhammad Fneish, is quoted as saying by Al-Anbaa’.
“Whenever the response will come, Lebanon’s interest will be taken into account before anything,” the minister said.
In July 2012, at least six people were killed and 30 wounded when a bomb exploded on a bus carrying Israeli tourists in the Bulgarian resort town of Burgas.
A few months prior to that incident, a car bomb exploded near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi, resulting in injuries. That same day, authorities in Georgia found a bomb underneath an Israeli diplomat’s car just outside of the embassy in Tbilisi.
Israel believes Hezbollah and its chief sponsor, Iran, were behind these attacks.