Katz: “Against Iran, the mission has not yet been completed” – Israel will not leave the security zones

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz warned on Sunday, November 8, that Tehran is again moving toward nuclear weapons and that his country’s confrontation with Iran is not over. “Against Iran, the mission has not yet been completed,” he said at the state memorial ceremony for the fallen of Operation Kadesh, at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem.

Mr Katz accused the Islamic Republic of “trying to reignite its efforts for nuclear weapons, along with other serious actions that put the State of Israel in real danger.” “We cannot tolerate these threats,” he continued, adding: “Our duty is to be ready for every scenario and to do whatever is needed to protect Israel’s citizens.” He described a state determined “more than ever” to forestall danger before it strikes and to follow a “preventive and offensive policy” toward its adversaries.

In the same speech he made clear that the Israeli army will not give up the positions it holds beyond the borders. “We will not withdraw from the security zones in Gaza, in Lebanon and in Syria,” he declared, with a message to Hezbollah: if the organisation chooses to join an Iranian attack on Israel, it “will take extremely heavy blows.”

The threat follows the line he set out on October 20, in a post on X about the 700-square-kilometre security zone in southern Lebanon. There he wrote that, if Hezbollah joins an Iranian attack on Israel, the army is ready for a ground advance toward the areas of Nabatieh and the Litani River, and that any territory seized would become a permanent part of the zone.

The statements come a day after the Revolutionary Guards announced that Iran is no longer bound by the limit it had set itself on the range of its missiles. Israeli and American officials fear that Tehran will try to rebuild parts of its nuclear programme after the American and Israeli strikes on its facilities.

A call for unity amid political deadlock

Much of the speech turned to domestic politics. The October 27 election left Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc with 53 seats and Gadi Eisenkot’s alliance with 48, and President Isaac Herzog gave Mr Eisenkot the first mandate to form a government. On Saturday evening the outgoing prime minister called for a national unity government, and Mr Katz moved along the same lines.

“We can disagree and clash, but when the security of the state is at stake we must know how to overcome our differences,” he said. “We have one state, one army and a common fate.” According to the minister, fighters and commanders must know that the people stand behind them. The great missions that remain, he concluded, will demand “all the strength of the army and all the resilience of the people.”

The ceremony marked 70 years since the 1956 Sinai campaign, known in Israel as Operation Kadesh, when Israeli forces fought the Egyptian army in the Sinai Peninsula. In the fighting 180 Israeli soldiers were killed. Mr Katz, a former paratrooper, recalled the paratroop drop near the Mitla Pass with which the operation opened.