Education Minister Naftali Bennett met today with representatives of foreign countries in Israel in light of the current tensions regarding the security situation in the north of Israel.

Participating in the meeting were foreign diplomats, ambassadors and deputy ambassadors from Russia, Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, India, Norway, Ukraine, Austria, Finland, Poland, Zambia, Greece, Hungary, Cyprus, Sweden, Nigeria, Holland, Spain, Denmark, Rwanda, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Serbia.

Bennett said: “Ever since the year 2000, Israel’s strategy has been to hope that Hezbollah’s missiles will simply rust and not be used against us. This strategy has allowed Hezbollah to grow and continue to arm itself and become a tangible threat to the State of Israel. Now that Iran is attempting to entrench itself in Syria we will not be making the same mistake that we did in Lebanon. We are willing to create a small level conflict now to prevent a serious threat in the future.”

Bennett then added: “We have created a simple equation according to which we view Hezbollah as running Lebanon. We will no longer differentiate between what is called the terror organization of Hezbollah and the political rulership of Lebanon. Nasrallah is the leader of Hezbollah, he understands that attacking Israel will change his status from the person “protecting” Lebanon to the person who is responsible for its destruction.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)