Hezbollah Drone Strikes House in Metula | WATCH
Hezbollah struck a house in Metula with an explosive drone, the fourth infiltration in a single day. Inside the cabinet, Israel's army chief demanded strikes on Beirut. Netanyahu said no.
A Hezbollah explosive drone struck a house in the northern Israeli town of Metula on Sunday, the fourth drone infiltration into Israeli territory in a single day. Miraculously, no casualties were reported.
The IDF confirmed the strike in a statement: "Following alerts activated a short time ago regarding the infiltration of hostile aircraft in several areas in the north of the country, Hezbollah launched a number of explosive drones toward IDF forces and Israeli territory. As a result, the fall of an explosive drone was identified in Metula. The incident is under investigation."
The earlier incidents began at 5:47 a.m., when alerts were activated in the Shetula area. The IDF said a suspicious aerial target was identified but contact with it was lost. A second infiltration occurred around 8:30 a.m. near Arab al-Aramshe, also without casualties. Around 11:30 a.m., sirens sounded in Kiryat Shmona and surrounding areas, with the IDF subsequently confirming the fall of an unmanned aerial vehicle in an area where IDF forces are operating in southern Lebanon. No casualties were reported in that incident either.
Chief of Staff vs. Prime Minister
The escalating drone campaign has exposed a sharp internal rift at the top of Israel's security establishment.
IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir attended Sunday night's cabinet meeting having come directly from a visit to the 401st Brigade in the north, where he was present at the command when Corporal Nehorai Leizer was killed by a Hezbollah drone on Saturday. He arrived at the cabinet table with little patience for restraint.
"You can't work with tweezers," Zamir told the cabinet, delivering pointed criticism of the government's containment policy in Lebanon. He called for escalation, arguing that Israel needed to "create a different equation that includes striking buildings in Beirut and Tyre in order to deter."
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the proposal, instead demanding improved protection solutions and pressing the IDF to move quickly to develop a concrete response to the drone threat.
The clash did not stay confined to the military. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich backed the Chief of Staff's position, declaring that Israel should "bring down 10 buildings in Beirut for every 10 drones." National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir went further, saying it was "forbidden to normalize the reality of explosive drones," and called on Netanyahu to "bang on Trump's table and announce we are returning to war in Lebanon." Ben Gvir also called for cutting electricity to Lebanon, capturing the Zahrani area, and resuming full-scale fighting.
Netanyahu, facing pressure from his own coalition on one side and the constraints of a fragile ceasefire framework on the other, has so far held the line against escalation. The drone campaign, meanwhile, shows no sign of stopping.