Residents of the Gaza border area can safely return to their homes but in Israel’s north, Hezbollah is still too much of a threat for normal life to resume, Maj.-Gen. Rafi Milo, commander of the Homefront Command, said on Tuesday at a Ynet conference.

“We reached considerable achievements in the south and I’m comfortable with the decision to allow Gaza border residents to go home from a security viewpoint,” he said. “The trust of the residents in the IDF was breached on October 7th and their sense of security was fractured. Since then, their trust has increased but restoring their sense of security is more difficult.”

However, the north is a different story, he said. “On one hand, we’ve achieved significant gains in the war with Hezbollah including harming their infrastructure but we have not yet removed the threat. We’re doing everything we can to bring residents back but not while Hezbollah still poses a security risk.”

Hezbollah has a massive arsenal of missiles and rockets that can reach most of Israel. Additionally, it has constructed an extensive and sophisticated tunnel network over the past 30 years that poses an extremely severe risk to Israeli residents of the north and all of Israel.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)