An Israeli journalist: downing the UAVs over Lebanon obliged IDF to take precautions

Ramallah – North-Press Agency

While Hezbollah announced the downing of an Israeli UAV as it was crossing the town of Ramya near the southern borders of Lebanon, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman announced that the drone had crashed during what he called an operational flying.

“There is no concern information could be taken from it,” the spokesperson added.

In fact, the Israeli spokesman used the term “crash” and did not acknowledge that it was downed by Hezbollah, meaning that the cause of the fall remained open.

However, the Israeli military journalist Eyal Alima told North-Press that in any case the crash of the Israeli drone came after Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s promises to down any aircraft that would cross the Lebanese airspace, which means that what happened was a practical implementation of Nasrallah threats.

Alima explains that he doesn’t know the correct story about the cause of the crash, but he ruled out that the shooting down in the Lebanese airspace would renew the escalation between Hezbollah and Israel or lead to a military confrontation between them.

“The drone was carrying out an intelligence mission to gather information and maybe it was filming some bordering areas,” he said.

However, Alima explains that these developments will oblige the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to take precautionary measures and may even reach the level of changing the methods of its activities regarding the launched drones over Lebanon’s airspace.

“All of these things will be taken into account both field and operationally, but I don’t think such an incident will lead to an escalation in the bordering area with Lebanon,” he said.

Another Israeli source, confirmed to North-Press, that Israel began to take precautionary measures regarding its drones, including being equipped with self-detonation devices in order to destroy them before Hezbollah seized the downed drone.

In addition to increasing the altitude of the flights and providing them with accurate devices, so that the obtained information by these aircraft would flow directly to the Israeli intelligence centers in Tel Aviv before being deleted, in order to prevent Hezbollah of knowing the targets obtained in case the drone was seized.