Egypt Daily News – Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant revealed the secrets of the assassination operations carried out by Tel Aviv that targeted Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, in addition to the Pager explosions.
In statements to Channel 12, Galant said that the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah was scheduled for Friday, revealing that “Nasrallah had been at the target site for days, and there was concern that he would leave at any moment.”
“The Sunday before, the chief of staff, the air force commander and others arrived and presented me with the plan to carry out the operation, its location and all the relevant details. I asked them what was the success rate of the operation? 90%. I asked them: How many tons of explosives will you drop on him? 40 tons. I told them: Go to the alternative option of 80 tons, double the amount of explosives until we reach a 99% success rate.”
He revealed that “on Wednesday, two days before the operation, a Cabinet meeting was held, where the Chief of Staff presented the method of carrying out the assassination, and when I asked to present the operation for a vote, (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu suddenly stopped the meeting, and said we are not ready to make a decision now, I will return from the United States on Sunday, and we will make the decision then.”
He revealed that on Friday morning (the day of the Sept. 27 assassination), I sat down with the chief of staff, and we decided that the deadline for the execution would be 6 p.m. At that point, we called the prime minister, and he gave his approval, but asked to postpone the execution to 6:30, because he would be at the UN podium. In the end, we reached a compromise at 6:20 p.m. That’s when 84 bombs, each weighing one ton, were launched at all the designated locations – and that’s how Nasrallah was killed.”
He recalled that on Sept. 20, during the afternoon hours, the head of the IDF’s operations staff, General Pisyuk, walked in and said to me, “Look, we have all the leaders of Radwan and Ibrahim Aqeel in one place. We had a conversation that lasted about two or three hours, and the decision was made to carry out the operation. The leadership of Radwan’s operational system was liquidated. These are the people who planned the attack inside Israeli territory.”
“When they responded on Saturday evening, we attacked them on Sunday, and on Monday morning, within 15 hours, Hezbollah’s rocket and missile system was eliminated. This was the most intense day of fighting in the north since the beginning of the campaign. In 24 hours, the Air Force targeted more than a thousand targets across Lebanon,” he said, noting that ”Hezbollah had about 5,500 long-range rockets capable of reaching the center of Israel, and after this attack, they only have a few hundred left.”
Gallant described the detonation of pagers in Lebanon as a “marginal event,” noting that there were booby-trapped communications devices in Hezbollah’s warehouses that would have eliminated the group’s entire fighting force.
“Hezbollah had 44,000 rockets at the beginning of the war, but Israeli strikes reduced its arsenal to less than 10,000,” he said.
Gallant criticized the Netanyahu government’s handling of the October 7 attack, saying that he was riding his bike that morning and learned of the start of the attack from his daughter, while the Chief of Staff was in a state of “not understanding what was going on.”
He also revealed that Netanyahu had been in a “psychological state” since the start of the war, and that some Israeli units implemented the “Hannibal Procedure” policy while others did not, leading to great confusion.
Gallant concluded his remarks by emphasizing that Netanyahu was putting US President Donald Trump’s calculations above all else, even more so than resigned National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, noting that the situation was completely different under President Joe Biden.
