‘WE have the right to attack anywhere in Israel, since Israel has attacked anywhere in Lebanon,’ Hezbollah Deputy Leader Naim Qassem said in a televised news conference yesterday.
‘The resistance will never be defeated because they’re the ones that own the land. They will fight and die in dignity. Victory will come with patience.’
He insisted: ‘You must know that if we do not face Israel, Israel will achieve its goals. Israel is behaving in such a bad way, killing women, killing children, committing crimes, committing massacres.
‘But when we stand, and we challenge and we face and we sacrifice and we let them feel the pain and we impose restrictions in front of them, then we are protecting the generations in dozens of years and hundreds of years ahead …
‘When the Israelis started attacking Lebanon recently this battle had to be done, according to them, in three stages. One, to hit the leaders and the military command in order to lose our forces and not to be able to defend ourselves and our families in order to face the occupation. Two, to eliminate Hezbollah. Three, to form Lebanon in a new way that is accepted by the Israelis and the Americans and for Lebanon not to be strong enough to protect them.
‘The Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrullah has built a strong resistance that has prepared itself. Our Mujahadeens are willing to do anything. Our Mujahadeens never fear death. The enemy, the Israelis who have nothing to do. All the capabilities, the military capabilities of Israel, will never help them at the end of the day.
‘The Israelis kill some soldiers of the Lebanese army and the Israelis attack the UNICEF, south Lebanon, and the Israelis explode churches, mosques and today the Israelis attacked an aid convoy with the flag of the Red Cross.
‘UNRWA was evaluating the situation and the Commissioner said UNRWA had never seen this before. Even when hitting the UN forces, the UNIFIL.
‘Where are the emergency forces, where is the United Nations, France, Britain, America, where are they? They all say rely on the international resolutions. No international resolutions can force Israel to do anything. The Israelis don’t respect international resolutions …
‘We are in a period of an Israeli war against Lebanon. Our Mujahadeen have faced Israel at different points on the front line. Frankly speaking, what our brothers in the Mujahadeen have achieved in the past two weeks was bigger and better than expectations. Our Mujahadeen are there waiting for the Israelis, to confront them more and more. The enemy must feel the pain. You have seen these attacks on Tel Aviv, our drones hit Tel Aviv. They have lost 100 of their men.’
- UNICEF said yesterday that more than 400,000 children have been displaced in Lebanon in the past three weeks. The UN children’s agency warned of a ‘lost generation’ in the country grappling with multiple crises and now Israeli attacks.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said most victims of an Israeli air strike on a building in northern Lebanon were women and children. Spokesman Jeremy Laurence said: ‘12 women and two children’ were among those killed in the attack in the Christian-majority town of Aitou, and Lebanese health officials said that at least 21 people were killed.
- Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has demanded security guarantees for Italy’s soldiers deployed in Lebanon. More than 1,000 Italian soldiers serve in the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and in a separate mission that trains local armed forces.
‘We believe the attitude of the Israeli forces is completely unjustified,’ Meloni said, describing it as a ‘blatant violation’ of a UN resolution on ending hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel.