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01-10-2024
BEIRUT: Hezbollah fighters are primed to confront any Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon, the group’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said on Monday in his first public speech since Israeli airstrikes killed its veteran chief Hassan Nasrallah last week.
Israel will not achieve its goals, he said.
“We will face any possibility and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement,” he said in an address from an undisclosed location.
He was speaking as Israeli airstrikes on targets in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon continued, extending a two-week long wave of attacks that has eliminated several Hezbollah commanders but also killed about 1,000 Lebanese and forced one million to flee their homes, according to the Lebanese government.
Nasrallah’s killing, along with the series of blows against the organization’s communications devices and assassination of other senior commanders, constitute the biggest blow to the organization since Iran created it in 1982 to fight Israel.
He had built it up into Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force, with wide sway across the Middle East.
Now Hezbollah faces the challenge of replacing a charismatic, towering leader who was a hero to supporters because he stood up to Israel even though the West branded him a terrorist mastermind.
“We will choose a secretary-general for the party at the earliest opportunity…and we will fill the leadership and positions on a permanent basis,” Qassem said.
Qassem said Hezbollah’s fighters had continued to fire rockets as deep as 150 km (93 miles) into Israeli territory and were ready to face any possible Israeli ground incursion.
“What we are doing is the bare minimum…We know that the battle may be long,” he said. “We will win as we won in the liberation of 2006 in the face of the Israeli enemy,” he added, referring to the last big conflict between the two foes.
Israel says it will do whatever it takes to return its citizens to evacuated communities on its northern border safely.
It has not ruled out a ground invasion and its troops have been training for it.
“The elimination of Nasrallah is an important step, but it is not the final one. In order to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities, we will employ all of our capabilities, and this includes you,” Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told troops deployed to the country’s northern border.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said on Monday his government was ready to fully implement a U.N. resolution that had aimed to end Hezbollah’s armed presence south of the Litani River as part of an agreement to stop the war with Israel.
Mikati said the Lebanese army could deploy south of the river, which lies about 30 km from the country’s southern border.
Hours before Hezbollah’s Qassem spoke, the Palestinian militant group Hamas said an Israeli airstrike killed its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, along with his wife, son and daughter in the southern city of Tyre on Monday. Another Palestinian organization said three of its leaders died in a strike in central Beirut, the first such hit inside the capital’s limits.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said its leaders were killed in a strike on Beirut’s Kola district.
Media witnesses said the strike hit the upper floor of an apartment building. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
