Former Defense Minister MK Naftali Bennett warned Monday that the growing wave of illegal immigration across Israel’s northern border could be used by Lebanese terrorist groups.
In recent weeks, Israel has monitored an increase in infiltration attempts across its northern border, including several incidents involving non-Lebanese nationals.
Last month, a Syrian man was shot while attempting to cross illegally from Lebanese territory into Israel.
Five Sudanese men were arrested attempting to infiltrate into Israel from Lebanon in early May, with five more Sudanese nationals caught trying to sneak across the border later that month.
The increase in border infiltration attempts on the northern border began after a Sudanese national was arrested in January trying to sneak into Israel.
After Israeli security forces determined he did not pose a security threat, the man was released, looking to find a job in Tel Aviv, where he later was employed as a dishwasher.
The infiltrator later publicized his story, encouraging other would-be illegal immigrants to cross into Israel from Lebanon.
While the infiltration attempts are primarily by illegal immigrants looking to find jobs in Israel, Bennett warned Monday that the phenomenon could be used by terrorist groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
“During the coronavirus pandemic, we sometimes ignore other important subjects. I want to call attention to a problem developing on the northern border in recent days with Hezbollah.”
“More than a few infiltrators have crossed the northern border from Lebanon into Israel. You can look at it as a regular illegal immigration problem, but I think that Hezbollah definitely isn’t unhappy about the phenomenon, and might actually be encouraging it to get us accustomed to it, so that we become less alert.”
“I look to the Defense Minister and the security establishment to deal with and stop this, otherwise the phenomenon will increase and we’ll wake up one day to a terrorist infiltration and attack by Hezbollah commandos into one of the towns in northern Israel…a very dangerous scenario, and we need to prevent it now, before it begins.”