Yuval Steinitz
Yuval SteinitzYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

Energy Minister Dr. Yuval Steinitz (Likud), who is also a Cabinet member, spoke on Monday morning about Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's policy in Lebanon.

In an interview with Reshet Bet, Steinit emphasized that he believes the IDF response to Hezbollah's attacks on an Israeli military base were correct and properly calculated.

"During the general battle, the battle between wars, this is not the first time Hezbollah has responded, and our response was very forceful," he explained. "Everyone understands that there's a difference between incidents on the border and an all-out war. Even during the period before 1967, when they fired from the Golan Heights at Israeli towns and at IDF bases, not everything led to an all-out war."

Steinitz also said that a calculated response does not equal acceptance. "It's not like you start a war over every little thing. It was never like that, ever. The same is true today. This is not acceptance. When there are 300 to 350 terrorists killed in the past year in Gaza, and over 1,000 injured, that's a harsh response."

Regarding the fact that Hezbollah has re-armed, Steinitz noted that the current situation was created due to the retreat from Lebanon and the United Nation's Resolution 1701 at the end of the Second Lebanon War.

"In recent years Hezbollah has tried to escalate things, not quantity-wise but quality-wise, and that's what we're working to prevent."