Major General (res.) Yoav Galant, who is a leading candidate in the Kulanu party’s Knesset list, hinted strongly Sunday that the killing of Jihad Mughniyeh in Syria may have been timed to help Binyamin Netanyahu do well in the upcoming national elections.

“There are ongoing security needs, and in these contexts I suppose that operations are carried out in a responsible and serious way,” said the former Head of Southern Command. “And yet, from events in the past, you can learn that sometimes the timing is not unrelated to the subject of elections.”

Galant gave as an example the elimination of Hamas’s “military” arm, Ahmed Jaabari, in November of 2012. “The timing of his elimination was not an event that could only have been done at that date,” he explained. “I was Head of [Southern] Command five years previously, and there were many many opportunities in which it was possible, and necessary, to do it, and I recommended it as well, but for some reason it did not happen on those dates.”

Galant noted that the killing of Jaabari was carried out at the outset of Operation Pillar of Defense, shortly before the January 2013 elections.

Today’s strike was the second in as many months by Israeli aircraft on pro-regime targets in Syria.

In December, the IAF reportedly targeted sophisticated surface-to-air missiles positioned near Damascus, which some reports suggested were destined for Hezbollah.

Israel has struck Hezbollah-bound missiles on several occasions previously, with IDF and political leaders vowing to prevent “game-changing” weapons making their way to the Iranian-backed terrorist group’s hands.

But Sunday’s strike marks the first time such a senior Hezbollah figure has been targeted in this way.