Former Deputy Chief of the Israeli National Security Council Eran Etzion warned on Thursday against further escalating the war with Hezbollah, stating that "Israel must avoid reaching a third war with Lebanon."

"An agreement that achieves a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will also achieve a ceasefire in the north," Etzion said in an interview with Channel 13.

"Neither Israel nor Hezbollah wants a full-scale war," even though they "have at times been close to an escalation that would look entirely different," he added.

"The situation contains a kind of contradiction that is difficult to explain. Both sides do not want an escalation, yet there is a constant, uncontrolled escalation, manifested, among other things, by Hezbollah expanding its ranges, introducing precision weapons, targeting new objectives, and indicating it will add strategic infrastructure in the Haifa Bay area, where there are crucial energy infrastructures and other similar sites it has avoided until now, to its list of targets," he further said.

Channel 13 commented that "the expansion has been clear since the beginning of the fighting," and that Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has continually pushed boundaries each time.

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Meanwhile, Hezbollah's Hoopoe drone reaching the Ramat David Airbase, the sole airbase in the north for the Israeli forces, remains a serious concern for the regime.

Military and security commentator Roy Sharon told the Israeli broadcaster Kan that this time, "a reconnaissance drone reached up to 50 kilometers, which is very worrying," adding that Hezbollah achieved "a consciousness-level success."

"We are indeed seeing an upward curve in Hezbollah's capability development over the past nine months," he added, noting that the entire border area "has turned into an operational training field for the party, sometimes using topography and other times using technological improvements for its unmanned aerial vehicles."

In light of the escalation and Hezbollah's developing military capabilities, Israeli officials warn of escalating the war even further, which would "have significant consequences," and its "impact on Israel itself will be stark."

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