Shafaq News/ On Thursday, Shaul Goldstein, CEO of Noga, which manages and oversees Israel's electrical systems, stated that Israel is completely unprepared for a war with Hezbollah and the damage such a conflict could inflict on the country's energy infrastructure.

Goldstein said, "We're not ready for a real war. We live in a fantasy world, in my opinion," according to Haaretz.

Israeli media circulated Goldstein's comments, which sparked controversy before he later appeared to retract his statements somewhat, saying in an interview with the public broadcaster Kan, "I said irresponsible things. I should not have done that."

Speaking at a conference organized by the Institute for National Security Studies in the southern city of Sderot, Goldstein said Israel would be "uninhabitable" after 72 hours without electricity.

"You look at our entire infrastructure, the fiber optics, the ports—and I won't go into sensitive matters—we are not in a good situation," Haaretz reported.

He added, "If (Hezbollah's secretary-general Sayyed Hassan) Nasrallah wants to take down Israel's power grid, all he needs to do is call the person in charge of Beirut's power system, which looks exactly like Israel's."

Goldstein continued, saying that Hezbollah "doesn't even need a drone; he can call a second-year electrical engineering student and ask where the most critical points in Israel are. Everything is on the internet. I won't say it here, but anyone who goes on the internet can find it."

Goldstein issued further warnings, saying, "Israel is an energy island, and we need to supply ourselves with energy."

"The bottom line is that after 72 hours of an outage, it's impossible to live in Israel."

He added, "People don't understand how much our lives here depend on electricity…If the war is postponed by a year, five years, or ten years, our situation will be better."

Goldstein's warning drew immediate criticism from Meir Spiegler, CEO of the Israel Electric Corporation, who said Goldstein's remarks were "irresponsible, detached from reality, and spread panic."

Both the Institute for National Security Studies and Noga distanced themselves from Goldstein's comments, with Noga stating that they "do not represent the company's professional assessments regarding the preparedness of the Israeli energy sector for emergencies."

The Israeli Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure also said that the Israeli electricity grid is "strong and ready to handle all possible scenarios."

Eli Cohen, the Israeli Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, vowed that "Israel will not be plunged into darkness."

The Israeli army and Hezbollah exchanged fire across the border again on Thursday following escalating threats between the two sides, raising fears of a wider war.

Since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7 in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah and the Israeli army have exchanged almost daily shelling along the border.

The shelling has intensified in recent weeks. On Thursday, Hezbollah announced it had shelled a military site in northern (Israel) with "dozens of Katyusha rockets" in "response" to the killing of one of its fighters in an Israeli airstrike in the town of Deir Kifa in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli army announced in a statement that one of its aircraft "carried out a precise strike in the Deir Kifa area in southern Lebanon," killing a Hezbollah member "responsible for planning and executing attacks against Israel and leading Hezbollah ground forces" in Jouaiya in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah warned on Wednesday that no place in Israel "would be safe" from his fighters' rockets in the event of war, amid fears of an escalating conflict between Hezbollah and the Israeli army against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza.