MARKING one week since local Hezbollah leader Samir Al-Kuntar’s assassination near Damascus at the hands of an Israeli missile, Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah warned on Sunday that Hezbollah’s retaliation, which could be inside the Israeli entity or abroad, is inevitable.
Nasrallah said: ‘To us, whatever are the consequences and threats, which we don’t fear, we can’t tolerate and forgive those who shed the bloods of our fighters and brothers anywhere in the world.’ He warned the Israeli military and government to be worried inside its borders and abroad, ‘they are the ones who miscalculated, not us’.
In a televised speech one week after the martyrdom of 29-year-long-prisoner Samir Kuntar, the secretary general said the retaliation for Kuntar’s assassination has fallen into the hands of fellow members ‘who are faithful to the bloods of martyrs’. Hezbollah, his eminence said, would retaliate to the assassination ‘at the appropriate time and place and in the appropriate method’.
Nasrallah also said: ‘Look at the borders from Naqoura to the last Israeli site in the occupied Golan, where are the enemy soldiers? Aren’t they hiding in holes like rats?’ Samir Al-Kuntar, who was freed in 2008 in a swap deal between Hezbollah and the Israeli enemy, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Damascus suburb of Jaramana.
Nasrallah praised Kuntar as an ‘icon’ of resistance who didn’t submit to his Israeli jailer but remained a school in everything. ‘On this day we are in need to regain readiness to sacrifices as Kuntar’s 30 years in Israeli prisons show the role model of sacrifice. ‘Samir’s 30 years in prison can’t be explained in a couple of sentences, the son of Jabal (mountain) the Mount of determination and steadfastness, with all the sufferings he faced were enough to break his heart and emotions but it failed to do so.
‘On the contrary, he was more resilient and steadfast even when he saw all his fellows being freed from prisons. As he was sentenced to life in Israeli prisons, he continued his education, he used to lift morals of other prisoners, he exerted efforts in flourishing the Palestinian cause…’
Nasrallah said he hadn’t known Martyr Kuntar until 2000 when Hezbollah was negotiating a swap deal with the Israeli enemy. ‘Samir affected me most after 2000 when the German mediator told us the release of Kuntar was impossible. That day, Kuntar was selfless and told us not to stop the deal on the precondition of freeing him, he didn’t want the deal which would see his fellow freed to be terminated,’ he said.
After his release in 2008, Kuntar could have lived a normal life amongst his family and friends but he refused that, Sayyed Nasrallah said. ‘He even requested to help the resistance in its struggle against the Zionist entity and offered to give his expertise to Hezbollah as he had left Palestine only to return to it, and demanded that he be trained militarily. I, personally, told him not to join the ranks of Islamic resistance fighters and be under danger since you are a symbol and you can play a supreme model role, but he refused that.
‘Samir wanted to be on the front lines, until the developments began to flare in Syria and a new horizon opened for the establishment of a Syrian popular resistance, he found out that he can give help and offer something special there, so he requested that he be allowed to join his resistance brothers in Syria,’ Sayyed Nasrallah indicated. Samir and his brothers helped in transferring expertise to the Syrian youth resistance which the enemy fears, he added.
Nasrallah pointed out that the Israeli enemy sought to abort any Syrian popular resistance project in the Golan since its beginning. ‘That’s why it pursued any member of this resistance and only being a member of it would subject him to arrest or killing. This shows the sensitivity of this front to the Israeli, they don’t want to open such door, not only because of the fear of liberation of Golan Heights, but because they don’t want the return of Golan to the political map,’ his eminence said.
Kuntar’s ‘sin’ was that he took responsibility of the Golan front, at the time when the Israeli enemy doesn’t want this front to ignite, Sayyed Nasrallah revealed. ‘Kuntar and the Qunaitra martyrs played a role in providing support to the resistance movement in the Golan and this is what Israel feared,’ Hezbollah’s leader said referring to an Israeli air raid that struck a Hezbollah convoy in the Golan Heights town in January this year.
Among those killed in the airstrike were Jihad Moghniyeh, the son of Hezbollah Martyr Commander Imad Moghniyeh, and field commander Mohammad Issa. An Iranian general and two Syrian fighters were also killed in the strike. It’s possible that the Israeli enemy misinterpreted, this enemy doesn”t understand what brotherhood means as Kuntar said in his will “we are equal in arms”. And Israel thought Kuntar wasn’t that important to Hezbollah and didn’t imagine that we would adopt his martyrdom and his revenge.’
Nasrallah noted that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has ‘sought to obtain international recognition of the annexation of the Golan under the excuse of the Syrian conflict’. ‘The Israeli decided that eliminating such an important target is worth the adventure and the sacrifice,’ he added. The Israeli, Nasrallah said, wants us to reach a place where we’d lose hope that this entity would ever be eliminated and that it’s eternal, strong, possesses nuclear warheads and has the strongest army and air force in the region and has the US, which refuses even to be condemned on its terrorism and crimes, in its back. But the school of Samir Al-Kuntar and the resistance says there’s no room for desperation, he added.
‘The state that is not based on its own strengths and only rely on the United States, which provide it with all the support and protection, will weaken and it’d be easy to wipe it out,’ Nasrallah said. ‘We don’t need the Arab’s money or their armies, only those fighting and being fought in Syria and Iraq are enough to wipe Israel off the map.’
The Hezbollah leader hailed the stabbing operations Palestinian youths are launching. ‘The steadfastness of the Palestinians today is the real resistance, the more so is revealed in their continued sit-in, high awareness, solid will, armed resistance, and stabbing operations that are frightening the Israeli soldiers and settlers. Those who are staging stabbing operations in Palestine know that they would either be martyred or jailed, but they remain in their resistance to regain their occupied territories.’
Nasrallah condoled the families of martyrs who fell alongside Martyr Samir Al-Kuntar in the Israeli airstrike in Jaramana, Syria. He also thanked all people who participated in the commemoration of Martyr Kuntar and all those who paid condolences on his martyrdom. The commemoration ceremony which was held by Hezbollah in Shahed hall, in Beirut’s southern suburb (Dahiyeh), was held marking one week since Kuntar’s assassination in an Israeli air raid in Syria.
At the beginning of the ceremony, a video was shown on a large screen on Kuntar marking his achievements and sufferings towards the resistance and Palestinian cause. Kuntar’s brother, Bassam, then delivered a speech on behalf of his family in which he vowed the continuation of his brother’s path. He also voiced confidence that the wise leadership of Hezbollah will choose the appropriate time and place to avenge Samir Al-Kuntar’s killing.
