The chief of Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed retaliation once again on Friday for the killing of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in an alleged Israeli strike earlier in the week in Beirut.
“The murder of al-Arouri … will certainly not go without reaction and punishment,” Nasrallah said during a speech via video link to commemorate the passing away of a Hezbollah official.
“If we remain silent about the killing of al-Arouri, Lebanon will be exposed …,” he said, adding that “the response will inevitably come.”
The killing of al-Arouri on Tuesday in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah, raised fears that the Gaza war could spread to Lebanon.
However, Nasrallah refrained in his Friday speech from declaring war on Israel.
Since the beginning of the Gaza war following the massacre by terrorists from the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement and other extremists in Israel on October 7, there have been almost daily confrontations between Israel’s army and Hezbollah in the border region.
Nasrallah said his group has carried out 670 operations against Israel since October 8 and that these military operations have consolidated a “balance of deterence” on the northern border with Israel.
He called on the residents of northern Israel to demand their government stop “the aggression on Gaza” in order to calm down the northern front.
“The solution for the settlers of the north is to go to their government and demand that it stop the aggression against Gaza,” Nasrallah said.
Nasrallah said when the war stops on Gaza and this page is turned Lebanon stands before the chance to liberate the rest of its land starting from Naqoura to Shebaa.
“We are now facing a historic opportunity to completely liberate every inch of our land” by opening the Lebanese front in south again, Nasrallah affirmed.
Israel has been demanding Hezbollah’s military apparatus withdraw north of the Litani river, which is bout 30 kilometres north of the border, arguing that UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended Israel’s 33-day war on Lebanon in 2006, had stipulated that.
A Lebanese military expert said that Hezbollah has refused to go back to the Litani river line but may reach a compromise of withdrawing between 6 to a maximum 7 kilometres from the Israeli border.
“But Hezbollah will not withdraw without benefits,” the expert said.
Israel wants to push Hezbollah away from its northern border to prevent a similar terrorist act like the one that took place on October 7.
