Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday forcefully denied reports that President Trump had asked Israel to refrain from striking Hezbollah tunnel infrastructure in Lebanon, dismissing the claims as fabricated at the opening of his weekly cabinet meeting.
"I heard it was reported in the media that President Trump asked that we not act against terror tunnels in Lebanon. That's a legend, fake news," Netanyahu said, according to Israeli journalist Amit Segal, who first reported the remarks. "He said nothing to me on the matter, and I didn't ask him. We operate according to our own considerations."
The denial addresses a wave of reports in Israeli media in recent days suggesting the Trump administration had imposed constraints on the Israeli military's operational latitude along the Lebanese border, at a moment when the northern front remains tense and Washington's diplomatic posture in the region is under close scrutiny in Jerusalem.
The prime minister's office has repeatedly pushed back this year on reports describing friction or coordination gaps between Netanyahu and Trump over military operations, including previous accounts of tense phone calls over strikes in Beirut and disputes over messaging around the war's progress. Sunday's denial follows that pattern, with Netanyahu again emphasizing that Israel's military decisions remain independent of American input.
The Israel Defense Forces, in a statement from its spokesperson's unit, said its troops carried out extensive operations across multiple fronts over the past week. In Gaza, forces destroyed more than a kilometer of underground tunnel routes. In southern Lebanon, the military said it struck terrorists in four separate incidents that posed a threat to its forces.
In the north, the IDF said it destroyed an underground route uncovered in the village of Majdal Zoun, with the air force carrying out air strikes, directed by ground forces, against militants deemed a threat to troops operating in the security zone. Israeli forces also struck three Hezbollah command posts, which the military said followed violations of the ceasefire agreement governing the border.
Netanyahu's comments come as Israel continues to navigate a complicated set of security challenges across several fronts simultaneously, even as it maintains close coordination with Washington on broader regional diplomacy, including talks over Iran's nuclear program and the reconstruction of Gaza. The prime minister sought to draw a clear line between that diplomatic cooperation and Israel's operational autonomy, telling ministers that reports of American involvement in specific military decisions were unfounded.
He did not directly address the source of the original reports or say whether any conversation with Trump had touched on Lebanon at all, beyond his blanket denial that the president had raised the issue of tunnel strikes.
