Leader of the Lebanese Resistance group Hezbollah vowed on Friday that Israel will pay the price for the blood of Lebanese civilians killed when the Israeli army targeted the Lebanese towns of Nabatiyeh, Al-Sawwanah in Southern Lebanon two days earlier.
Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah threatened to bomb the city of Eilat in southern Israel in response to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant’s threat to strike Beirut.
Nasrallah added that the party is at the heart of a real battle in which the martyrdom of fighters is expected, but harming civilians is something it does not accept.
He said the party on Thursday targeted the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Shmona with dozens of Katyusha rockets and a number of Falaq rockets as an initial response to Israel’s targeting of children and women in southern Lebanon.
Below are highlights from Nasrallah’s speech. It was translated and shared by the Resistance News Network Telegram Channel. It is published here in its original form.
🚨🇱🇧🇵🇸 Hezbollah‘s Nasrallah: "Gaza must come out of this war VICTORIOUS. The resistance in Palestine must come out VICTORIOUS. And as I said, from day one, Hamas must emerge VICTORIOUS."
pic.twitter.com/Ra1l7Nv28h— Jackson Hinkle 🇺🇸 (@jacksonhinklle) February 16, 2024
We Will Never Stop Supporting Gaza
“The enemy will pay the price of shedding the blood of our women and children in Nabatiyeh, Al-Sawwanah, and elsewhere, in blood.
“The price of this blood will be blood. Not sites, not vehicles, not surveillance equipment; this is a part of the battle that will continue.
“This front will not stop, no matter how much you transgress, kill, and threaten.
“The crazy Israeli War Minister talks about Beirut… It seems he forgot that the resistance in Lebanon possesses immense and precise missile capabilities that extend from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat.
“The aggression on the city of Nabatiyeh and Al-Sawwana is a development that must be closely examined as it targeted civilians and led to a large number of martyrs. We say that what happened was a deliberate act.
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“It is natural in this battle for fighters from Hezbollah or the Amal Movement to become martyrs, which is part of the ongoing and open battle. We strike the enemy when we can, and the enemy strikes us when they can.
“We are in the heart of a real battle on a front extending over 100 kilometers, and the rise of martyrs from the resistance is part of this battle.
“When we can take any action to neutralize civilians and protect them, we must do so. The enemy has gone too far in targeting civilians.
“The sensitivity of civilian casualties for us is significant, and one of the most important equations established on the day of Sayyed Abbas Musawi’s martyrdom was that the resistance began targeting the settlements in the north of occupied Palestine, starting an equation to protect civilians.
“In the face of civilian targeting, I say that the enemy’s goal through killing civilians is to pressure the resistance to stop supporting Gaza. The response to the massacre must be the continuation and escalation of resistance work on the front.
“We tell the enemy that targeting civilians only increases our anger, broadens our scope, and intensifies our work in the resistance.
“The targeting of the Kiryat Shmona settlement with dozens of Katyusha rockets and a number of Falaq missiles is an initial response.
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“The Yemeni people continue to target ships despite the American and British aggression against Yemen and its people.
“Isn’t it a disgrace, humiliation, weakness, and frailty that countries ruling over two billion Muslims cannot manage to bring medicine and food to the people of Gaza?
“Among the responsibilities placed upon us and upon the Islamic nations and the free people of the world is to clarify the truths.
“The Israeli enemy has not been able to present to the world a single piece of evidence for the lies it has promoted since October 7.
“If the United States stops arming and supporting Israel now, the aggression would stop immediately, whether Netanyahu likes it or not. The American administration and the Israeli officials are responsible for every drop of blood in the region, with the Israeli officials being mere tools.
“The resistance made the enemy live in an existential crisis that culminated in Al-Aqsa Flood.
“What Al-Aqsa Flood revealed is that the Israeli objective that it was working on is the displacement of Palestinians and the establishment of a pure Jewish state. The siege on the Gaza Strip aimed to lead Gaza to death quietly and calmly without shaking the world.
“The Israeli goal is to displace the people of the West Bank to Jordan, the people of Gaza to Egypt, and the people of the 1948 (Palestinian lands) to Lebanon. Responsibility requires preventing the displacement of Palestinians, and this requires a major confrontation.
“America is the one preventing the Lebanese army from having weapons and missiles that would provide it with a deterrence balance to protect Lebanon.
“The Israeli and American did not expect the resistance in Lebanon to have the will and courage to open the front to support Gaza.
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“Our goal, all of us in the axis of resistance—states, peoples, movements, and fighters—was and will remain that in this battle, the enemy must be defeated. Defeating the enemy in this battle means its failure to achieve its objectives. Our goal in the axis of resistance is to inflict the greatest losses on the enemy in this battle to force it to defeat and withdrawal.
“The ones concerned with political negotiation are the Palestinian factions that authorized Hamas, and we do not interfere with what happens in the negotiations.
“The brothers in Hamas and the Palestinian resistance represent the fronts of the Axis of Resistance and all the military and logistical support positions for them.
“The land borders are demarcated, and any negotiations will be based on ‘leave our Lebanese land’.
“The culture of our resistance is a culture of life and dignity, not a culture of humiliation and surrender.”
(The Palestine Chronicle)
Hezbollah needs to gradually step up and be heard. But, quickly they must commit. This is Palestine’s best chance yet of achieving a real statehood. An opportunity like this may not soon come again. Time is running out.