Hezbollah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem has warned that Israel would "receive a real slap in the face" if it expanded the conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border.

Since the surprise October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel, there have been near daily exchanges of cross-border fire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militants.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Friday said that Israel is “committed to returning the residents of the north to their homes,” after tens of thousands were evacuated amid daily clashes with Hezbollah.

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Friday charged that “instead of performing its duties to achieve the interests of Lebanon and its people,” the caretaker government has “ceded the decision to a party and allowed it to turn the country into a battlefield,” apparently referring to Hezbollah and its clashes with Israel.

Head of Hezbollah's bloc in parliament Mohammed Raad said Friday that Israel "is not ready" for a war with Lebanon as Hezbollah would fight "with all its might."

Since the start of the Gaza war, Israel and Hezbollah have traded cross-border strikes with gradually escalating intensity, even though neither side is believed to seek an all-out war which is bound to devastate both countries.

A member of Israel's War Cabinet confirmed that early in the war against Hamas in Gaza, an Israeli preemptive strike against Hezbollah was called off at the last minute.

Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief, said he was among those arguing against such a strike in what he described as a stormy Oct. 11 Cabinet meeting that left him hoarse from shouting.

"Good morning, madame. This is the bank calling. Are you at home?"

Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out more than three months ago, residents of southern Lebanon have been receiving strange phone calls from Lebanese numbers and from people speaking in Lebanese accents.

Caretaker Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib has warned Israel that a war on Lebanon would not be “easy” for it and that “rockets will fall on it from all sides.”

“The Houthis are playing an international role and what they are doing is related to Gaza. Our stance is in harmony with the Arab stance and we don’t want an expansion of the war,” Bou Habib said in a TV interview.

Israeli drones carried out airstrikes Thursday morning on a house in Kawkaba, a village in the Hasbaya District as artillery shelled the southern border towns of Aitaroun, Blida, Mays el-Jabal and the Marjaayoun valley.

Later in the day, Israeli warplanes struck the outskirts of Rab Tlatine, al-Taybe, and al-Odaisseh.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has reportedly urged all parties to elect a president.

"Berri has directly called all the parties concerned with the presidential file to seize the opportunity to protect the country by electing a president," Ain el-Tineh sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in remarks published Thursday.

Hezbollah has rebuffed U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein’s ideas for ending the border skirmishes with Israel but remains open to U.S. diplomatic efforts to avoid a ruinous war, a media report said, quoting Lebanese officials.