Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced Tuesday that Israel does not have "any intention to fight a war against Hezbollah."

He however warned that if Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah "commits a mistake" he will be "destroying Lebanon."

When Hezbollah announced last week that its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah would deliver his first public speech since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, much of the region held its breath.

Would Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the Arab world's most powerful paramilitary force, continue its limited exchanges of fire with Israel or throw itself wholeheartedly into the war? In Lebanon, streets emptied as people sat glued to their screens to watch, ready to parse his words along with decision-makers in Israel and across the Mideast.

Hezbollah said Tuesday that it fired rockets at Israel's artillery positions in the occupied Golan Heights in response to an overnight Israeli strike on a Hezbollah post on the outskirts of the town of Aramta in the Iqlim al-Tuffah region.

Aramta lies about 20 kilometers north of the border and is a Hezbollah stronghold. The strike was one of the deepest inside Lebanon since the fighting along the border erupted on October 8.

A journalist with Lebanese Al-Mayadeen television channel has filed a police complaint against an Israeli journalist who she alleged had "intimidated" her.

Hana Mohamed said Israeli journalist Haim Etgar confronted her at a post office after allegedly impersonating a postal employee and "threatening" her.

Western and non-Arab nations intensified their contacts over the past hours with Lebanese officials in a bid to contain the tensions on the southern front with Israel and avoid descent into a bigger confrontation, media reports said.

“These contacts expressed desire to preserve security and stability in Lebanon, especially on the southern front, and carried a renewed U.S. assurance that Israel does not intend to engage in a confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon,” al-Joumhouria newspaper reported.

The appointment of a new army chief of staff has become the most likely choice to avoid vacuum in the army command after the expiry of the term of Army Commander General Joseph Aoun on December 10, a media report said.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea has not insisted on extending Aoun’s term although she has considered his departure to be a great loss, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Tuesday.

U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein on Tuesday said "restoring calm on the southern border" of Lebanon with Israel is "of utmost importance to the United States."

"It should be the highest priority for both Lebanon and Israel," Hochstein urged after meeting Speaker Nabih Berri in Ain el-Tineh after he arrived in Lebanon on a surprise visit.

The Israeli war cabinet has discussed a mechanism for avoiding being dragged into wars on other fronts, specifically with Lebanon, Al-Jazeera television reported.

A Lebanese woman and her three granddaughters were laid to rest in their hometown in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, two days after they were killed in an Israeli drone strike that hit the car they were traveling in near the Lebanon-Israel border.

Hundreds of men and women marched before the four coffins, which were draped in black and white banners as they were carried through the streets of the village of Ainata. The coffins were later taken for burial in a cemetery in the nearby village of Blida.

Israel bombed Tuesday al-Labbouneh, near the southern Lebanese town of Naqoura, and the outskirts of the southern towns of Mhaibib and Aitaroun, as two Iron Dome missiles landed in an open area in the outskirts of the town of al-Tiri in south Lebanon after a failed interception attempt.

Meanwhile, Israeli media said that Israeli residents of the Galilee Panhandle near Lebanon's border had been asked to stay near shelters over a suspected security incident.