In an extensive preemptive strike Monday, Israel’s Air Force hit over 300 Hezbollah targets in eastern Lebanon, which were mostly stockpiles of missiles and launchers that the Islamist terrorist group had been planning to attack Israel with. Observers say the strikes mark a new phase in the growing conflict between Israel and Hezbollah along the Jewish state’s northern border.

The strikes were in response to the increasing number of missile attacks that Hezbollah has launched deep into Israeli territory, including the attempted bombing of the Ramat David air base in the northern coastal city of Haifa. Since the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children, Hezbollah has launched an unprovoked barrage of over 8,000 aerial weapons on northern Israel, forcing over 60,000 civilians to evacuate large swaths of the area. Over the last month, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have destroyed an estimated 400 of Hezbollah’s missile launchers.

As detailed in a video from IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari, for over 20 years, Hezbollah has “militarized civilian infrastructure” by hiding weapons inside the homes of Lebanese civilians in the dozens of villages near the country’s border with northern Israel. The weapons include “cruise missiles, rockets, launchers, and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles].” In response, the IDF is “destroying them with precise, intelligence-based strikes,” but not before “warning civilians to evacuate targeted areas,” which on Monday were issued “in part, by taking control of Lebanese radio broadcasts” and were also sent as text messages.

“Israel’s war is not with you,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in a message to Lebanese civilians. “For too long, Hezbollah has been using you as human shields. It placed rockets in your living rooms and missiles in your garage. Those rockets and missiles are aimed directly at our cities, directly at our citizens. To defend our people against Hezbollah strikes, we must take out these weapons. … Don’t let Hezbollah endanger Lebanon. Once our operation is finished, you can come back safely to your homes.”

The Israeli strikes come at a time when Hezbollah continues to reel from the widespread explosion of pagers that the group’s fighters used for communication, which killed at least 32 terrorists and injured between 3,000 and 4,000. Despite Israel publicly denying responsibility for the attack Sunday, it appears to be the result of a sophisticated Israeli intelligence operation.

The attack forced senior Hezbollah operatives to meet in person, which resulted in a precision Israeli strike on a gathering of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force last week, resulting in the death of senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil and at least 15 other members. Aqil was responsible for planning the bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people in April 1983, as well as the October 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks that killed 241 U.S. personnel.

Still, Hezbollah remains “the most formidable non-state militant group in the world.” It has an estimated 45,000 fighters and 150,000 warheads at its disposal.

On Monday, Chris Mitchell, Middle East bureau chief for CBN News, joined “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” to provide an update from the ground in Jerusalem, noting that the overarching goal of Israel’s latest strikes against Hezbollah is to allow its civilians who live in the northern region to return to their homes.

“[T]hey’ve [also] been sending tanks and armor up there,” he further noted. “It does seem like we’re on the verge of a possible ground invasion into south Lebanon. … Iran [may] decide that it doesn’t want a major war with Hezbollah that could decimate their largest proxy in the region. … [But it] doesn’t seem like Hezbollah is stepping back at all. They’re firing rockets further south into Israel and they have the munitions, unless they’ve already been exploded by Israel, to go even further.”

As for the prevailing attitude among the Israeli people during this time of ongoing conflict, Mitchell contended that they are largely united.

“I would say for the Israeli citizens, the majority are with the prime minister,” he observed. “There was a poll that just came out recently that showed his party, the Likud, [had] almost twice as much [support] as the nearest party. I think what Israelis want right now is they want victory. They want victory over Hamas. They want victory over Hezbollah. I think October 7th was a game-changer. And Israelis don’t want to live under the threat of rockets from the south or rockets from the north. … They want to make sure that the sacrifices that many of the Israeli men and women in uniform have made are not in vain.”

Mitchell concluded by spelling out what a victory for Israel would look like.

“I think victory would mean that Hamas is completely defeated [and are] no longer ab[le] to govern, and then the return of the hostages and also that there would be a new paradigm in the Gaza Strip,” he explained. “On the northern border, … they want to have a buffer zone from the current Lebanese-Israeli border all the way up to the Litani River. It’s about 19 or 20 miles up there. That was a buffer zone from 1982 to 2000, and that’s when Israel pulled out. Hezbollah filled that vacuum. So I think that would be considered a victory for Israel to be able to have that zone free of Hezbollah.”