Lebanese News Outlet "Naharnet": Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz has vowed that Israel will not allow advanced weaponry to reach Iran’s regional proxies, amid a recent uptick in Israeli airstrikes in Syria.

“Fifteen years ago, this place burned from Hezbollah rockets,” he said at the inauguration of a new factory opened by Israeli weapons maker Rafael in the northern town of Shlomi.

“On an operational level, we are acting extensively,” he said. “We won’t allow Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies in the area to be equipped with weaponry that will harm Israel’s (military) superiority in the region,” Gantz pledged.

Gantz added that Israel was simultaneously "working continuously to prevent war," but that if one breaks out, it "will be prepared to carry out operations that we haven't seen in the past, with means we didn't have in the past, that will hit the heart of terror (entities) and their capabilities."

On October 30, an Israeli missile strike in Syria destroyed “a Hezbollah and Iranian weapons and ammunition" convoy heading towards Lebanon, in a rare daytime attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has routinely carried out air strikes inside Syria, mostly targeting Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces.

The Israeli military rarely acknowledges individual strikes but has said repeatedly that it will not allow Syria to become a stronghold of its arch-foe Iran.