Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said that Israel intends to maintain its attacks on Hezbollah until it manages to return the residents of northern Israel to their homes.

“The price we are paying will not go in vain and we will keep striking (Hezbollah) until we return the residents of the north,” Gallant said during a visit to the occupied Golan Heights.

The five-nation group for Lebanon has returned the Lebanese presidential file to the spotlight through a series of meetings aimed at “convincing the parties to go to dialogue,” al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Monday.

The quintet “is convinced that no breakthrough will occur except through direct dialogue and in agreement with Speaker Nabih Berri,” the daily said.

Two people were killed Monday in an Israeli strike on a vehicle in southern Lebanon, according to the health ministry, with a Lebanese security source saying the car belonged to a U.N.-contracted company.

"The Israeli enemy's strike targeting a car in Naqoura left two dead," the health ministry said, without specifying whether they were civilians.

Residents of Beirut's southern suburbs have been scrambling to make contingency plans since an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in a busy neighborhood killed a top Hezbollah commander and touched off fears of a full-scale war.

For most, that means moving in with relatives or renting homes in Christian, Druze or Sunni-majority areas of Lebanon that are generally considered safer than the Shiite-majority areas where Hezbollah has its main base of support.

The head of the Christian political party Lebanese Forces has accused Hezbollah of dragging the country into a war with Israel without consulting the people.

In a speech attacking the Shiite Muslim group, Samir Geagea, who heads the main Christian bloc in parliament, accused Hezbollah of "confiscating the Lebanese people's decision on war and peace, as if there were no state".

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has said that the FPM has always called for “consensus” and “dialogue” among the Lebanese over the presidential file.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has stressed that the presidential file is “a domestic constitutional juncture that has nothing to do with the situations related to the Israeli aggression, whether in Gaza or in the Lebanese south.”

“We were the first to call … for all political and parliamentary parties to seize the current moment that the region is going through in order to finalize the presidential juncture as soon as possible, under the constitution’s ceiling and through consultations among everyone, without dictations or vetoes on anyone,” Berri said in a speech marking the 46th anniversary of the disappearance of Imam Moussa al-Sadr and his two companions.

Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil has continued his criticism of Hezbollah over the conflict in south Lebanon, stressing that “Lebanon alone cannot liberate Palestine.”

This week (Monday) the forces of the Israeli army’s Formation 91 in the eastern Galilee, near Lebanon, practiced defense scenarios and the transition from routine to emergency, the Israeli army said on Friday.

“The exercise took place in cooperation with police forces, the settlement defense departments, MDA (the Magen David Adom national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance and blood bank service) and other security forces,” the army added.

Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah on Friday said that Israel “thought that it targeted key weapons with a harsh and painful strike before realizing that it bombed its shadow.”

Fadlallah was referring to Israel’s claim that it waged a preemptive strike to foil Hezbollah’s retaliation to Fouad Shukur’s killing, an allegation that was dismissed by Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who said that Israel staged its airstrikes half an hour before his group launched over 300 rockets and several drones into Israel.