Hezbollah MP sends defiant message after Nasrallah assassination | Attacks between Israel and Lebanon News

Hezbollah's deputy chief has pledged that the Lebanese armed group is ready to counter an Israeli ground offensive despite the killing of its leader and many senior commanders.

Israel has not compromised Hezbollah's military capabilities, Sheikh Naim Qassem said on Monday as he delivered a message of defiance in a public address. Despite the setbacks suffered by the bombing of Lebanon in recent days, he insisted that the Iran-linked armed group would continue the fight.

Hezbollah's operations have continued at the same pace and even faster since the assassination of leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday, Qassem claimed.

He added that Hezbollah would soon install new leadership through “internal mechanisms.” The choice of new leadership is clear, Qassem continued, without giving further details.

'Ready'

“We are definitely ready. If the Israelis want a ground attack, the resistance forces are ready for it,” Qassem explained.

Hezbollah will continue its main objectives despite Israel's goal of creating chaos in Lebanon with aggression and massacres against civilians, Qassem continued.

“Israel is carrying out massacres in all areas of Lebanon until no house is left without traces of Israeli aggression,” he said. “Israel attacks civilians, ambulances, children and the elderly. It does not fight fighters, but rather carries out massacres.”

Qassem also emphasized the role of the United States, which he described as “a partner of Israel through unlimited military support – cultural, political, financial.”

“We will win, just as we won in our confrontation with Israel in 2006,” the deputy chief said as he ended the video message.

Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said Qassem's message was intended to reassure Lebanon's Shiite population, who are feeling vulnerable after the loss of Nasrallah as they see him as a father figure.

“He tried to reassure his people that Hezbollah still had the military capabilities to fight and told Israel that it was not ready to surrender,” Khodr said.

However, Khodr also noted that Hezbollah needed to regroup after a wave of Israeli attacks decimated its leadership.

The armed group must also consider whether and how to use its arsenal – including long-range missiles – against a military force that has already inflicted significant damage on Lebanon.

“The question is, if they hit population centers in Israel, what kind of response will Israel give – carpet bombing?” Khodr said.

More than 1,000 people have been killed in a wave of vicious Israeli attacks in the past two weeks, mostly in southern and eastern Lebanon.

The dramatic escalation came as Israel shifted its focus from fighting Hamas in Gaza to its northern border, where it has been caught in crossfire with Hezbollah almost daily since the Gaza war began in October.

Israel's stated goal in its offensive in Lebanon is to enable the return of tens of thousands of Israeli civilians to their homes in northern Israel.

However, its operations against Hezbollah, including the detonation of electronic communications equipment that killed 39 people and injured thousands, and the subsequent killing of Nasrallah, appear to have inspired confidence that it could destroy its long-time enemy in Lebanon.

For the first time since intensifying its attacks on Lebanon, Israel attacked a central area of ​​the capital Beirut on Monday, signaling a further possible escalation toward all-out war.

Cautious

Hezbollah's insistence on being able to defend Lebanon has been supported by its backer Iran, which appears wary of the risk of a wider regional war that a direct confrontation with Israel would entail.

Tehran will not send military forces to Lebanon or the Gaza Strip to confront Israel, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, despite Israeli bombings of both countries.

“There is no need to send additional or volunteer forces from the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said, adding that Lebanon and militants in the Palestinian territories “have the ability and strength to resist to defend aggression.”

Amid growing signs of a likely Israeli ground offensive, Lebanese acting Prime Minister Najib Mikati said in a news conference on Monday that the government remained committed to an immediate ceasefire.

Against this background, Beirut said it was ready to deploy the army in the south of the country to implement a United Nations resolution aimed at preventing war with Israel by ending Hezbollah's armed presence south of the Litani River.

Mikati said Lebanon was ready to fully implement UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and deploy the army south of the river, which is about 30 km (20 miles) from Lebanon's southern border.