Naim Qassem: Hezbollah ‘Regains Health’, Seeks to ‘Hurt’ The Enemy

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem said that the party is still strong despite the severe blows it suffered. He added it regained its wellbeing in the field and its capabilities, stressing the party set upon, a week ago, to implement a “new equation” to “hurt the enemy.”

He added, his 3rd speech since the assassination Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, the resistance’s missiles reached Tel Aviv, disabled Ben Gurion Airport, and forced two million Israelis to take shelters.

He pointed out the party can target any point in the “Israeli entity” and will choose the appropriate point according to his expression.

He stressed that what the resistance achieved in the field in two weeks was better than expected, and its main mission remains to “pursue the enemy and carry out operations against it in any place it enters.”

He also sent a message to the Israeli home front, stressing the only solution is for a ceasefire, adding, “I say to Israelis, do not believe what your officials tell you but look at your dead in the war.”

Ceasefire

He stated Hezbollah called for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip to stop firing on Israel. This solution is an expression of “a position of weakness”, but if the Israelis do not want this, we will continue.”

He pointed out that after the ceasefire “according to an indirect agreement”, Israeli settlers will be able to return to the north and other steps will be determined after that, the nature of which he did not specify.

However, he warned if the war continues, “the uninhabited settlements in the north will increase and more than two million Israelis will be in danger.”

Al-Aqsa Flood

Qassem pointed out, in his speech, that the “Al-Aqsa Flood” attack came after 75 years of occupation and is a “legitimate right” for the Palestinians.

He added, “the Palestinians have the right for such action to expel the occupation, shakes its presence and prevent it from continuing,” stressing “our support for the Palestinians is support for their right because they are the owners of the right, and must repel the danger from them and prevent the expansion of Israel.”

He also reiterated “Israel is an occupying usurping entity that poses a danger to the region and the world.”

He added, “Israel and those behind it are fighting and committing massacres, and we are in a situation that requires us to take a position,” noting that neither Lebanon nor the entire region can be separated from Palestine.

Expansionist Project

Qassem also stressed that Lebanon falls within an “Israeli expansionist project,” warning that Lebanon and the entire region “are facing the danger of a new Middle East designed in Israeli-American form.”

He added that Israel’s project in the region is “destructive and aim to eliminate the resistance and its people,” and that the world, Britain, France, and America are complicit with this “Israeli criminality.”

Resistance and Iran

Qassem stressed Iran supports the Palestinians in order to liberate Palestine, and this support is “a source of pride for Iran, which is exerting all its capabilities to strengthen and empower the Palestinians.”

He also mentioned that resistance to Israel is “legitimate and defensive” and its goal is to reject the occupation and liberate the land.

He added, “I say to the Mujahideen, you are the hope, so continue fighting and our confidence in you is great.”

A message to the Lebanese

Qassem stressed that the “Lebanese national solidarity” with the resistance is essential and that Hezbollah will remain despite its haters.

He added, “I say to the Lebanese, we must be patient to achieve victory and I promise you to return to your homes that will be rebuilt.. We will not leave you and you will not leave us and everyone will see the resistance with its great people.”

He also stressed that those who cause harm to Lebanon “are not those who defend people but those who kill them,” recalling that the Israeli occupation remained in Lebanon for 22 years and only left through resistance according to Al Jazeera.

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Germany Asks Israel For ‘Genocide Clause’ if it Wants Arms

Germany has asked Israel to sign a “genocide clause” if it wants the continuation of arms deliveries.

According to the German newspaper Bild, the “genocide clause” is a precondition. The newspaper added that no arms were delivered to Israel from Germany since March.

This piece of news is trending on the social media and is generating much interest from bloggers. The clause, apparently agreed to by the Israelis government and delivered in a form of a document to Berlin on 10 October commits Tel Aviv not to use German arms for its war genocide in Gaza.

Apparently the document was good enough as an assurance for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz who declared in parliament the following day that “We have supplied arms, and we will supply arms”.

The genocide clause insertion may have been pushed by the Economy Minister Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock  of the Greens who initially sought a ban on arms shipment to Israel.

One blogger says that “Germany asking Israel to sign a ‘genocide clause’ is like an ostrich with its head in the sand.”

Another says “that won’t absolve anyone of wrongdoing” while a third adds “the clause is insignificant if meant to be a way of fulfilling Germany’s ‘obligation to prevent Genocide.’ Its much closer to an admission of guilt.”

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Sirens Blast All Day in Israel

Sirens blasted all over north and central Israel, all day Monday, creating much havoc with people running up-and-down ready-made shelters.

In total sirens sounded in more than 194 towns, cities and locations in Israel with graphic posts of the sound blasts as the army reported that up to two million Israelis went down to shelters.

It started since early morning with the social media counting the number of sirens that went off registering first at 122, 182 and the latest being 194 and even 200.

In one case, videoclips showed Ben Gurion Airport; there, and at one point, flights were suspended and were not allowed to land. It was reported by Israel’s Channel 12 that one El Al flight had to quickly divert and continued circling over the Dead Sea.  

And there was another videoclip of passengers on one plane huddling between the seats and the isles while the siren blast outside on the runway.

These siren blasts went off as Hezbollah rockets came in batches on different locations in Israel and at different times.

However big sirens blasts went off with warnings that ballistic missiles were being fired at the Tel Aviv area coming from Lebanon.

Everyone, Tuesday, is covering the missiles starting first with Israeli newspapers and websites like Walla which has been on the lookout to warn Israelis.

Missiles landing on Israel has never stopped since 23 September when Israeli warplanes begun to pound southern Lebanon up to the southern district of Beirut, seen as an Hezbollah stronghold and occasionally on the north of Lebanon.

Here, Tuesday, for example, Israeli warplanes bombed a building that was sheltering displaced people from the Christian village of Aitou were 18 people were killed.

Since the war on Lebanon where 1.2 million people have been displaced Hezbollah adopted a tit-for-tat strategy of “if you bomb us we will bomb you.”

The sirens and rockets have never stopped since Sunday night, reaching a new height when a squadron of missiles and drones landed on Haifa, including a military base south of the city in Binyamina where at least four were killed and 67 soldiers were injured according to Israeli army sources.

Today the number of missiles that have landed on Israel from across the border are register between 100 to 200 per day. It is estimated that 10,000 rockets and missiles were fired on Israel since 7 October, 2023 but the number could be much higher.

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US Loses Trust in Israel Over Iran

The White House’s distrust of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has grown increasingly in recent weeks as Tel Aviv carries out multiple wars across the region, according to a report published Tuesday.

Washington’s wear in trust comes as Israel prepares its response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack last week. Tehran said it carried out the strikes in retaliation for the July assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and the killing of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last month.

Four US officials told the Axios news website that Washington is not opposed to Israel carrying out its reprisal but wants it to measure its attack according to Anadolu.

“Our trust of the Israelis is very low right now, and for a good reason,” one of the officials said.

Jake Sullivan, US President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, told his Israeli counterpart Ron Dermer last week that the US expects “clarity and transparency” from Israel as it plans its response, in part because any Israeli attack has implications for the security of US forces and interests in the region.

Skeptical

Sullivan signaled during the call that if the Biden administration is not informed beforehand, it would not automatically step in to thwart another ballistic missile attack from Iran, Axios said. Dermer reportedly said Israel wants to keep the US in the loop, but the officials are skeptical that is the case.

The US had been left in the dark about Israel’s assassination of Haniyeh, which took place just days after Netanyahu assured Biden that he would work to advance a Gaza cease-fire and hostage deal, as well as the strike that killed the Hezbollah leader and a series of explosions that targeted the militia’s communication devices.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was reportedly livid when he was informed of the strike that killed Nasrallah within minutes of the time when the jets dropped dozens of bombs on Beirut’s southern suburbs. He was irked by the fact that the notification time was not sufficient to adequately increase the security of US forces in the region.

Officials said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Austin that he was instructed by Netanyahu not to give Washington an advance warning.

Gallant’s visit to the Pentagon, which was to take place Wednesday, was called off at the last minute, according to the Pentagon. It did not give a reason, but Israeli media reported that Netanyahu is barring his defense minister from flying to Washington until Biden calls him directly.

Netanyahu’s further decision to walk away from a US-backed 21-day cease-fire proposal in Lebanon further eroded US trust, as has Israel’s decision to order all civilians in northern Gaza to flee south as it prepares a new offensive on the region.

US officials have said they are concerned that the directive is setting the stage for a potential siege and that Palestinian civilians would not be allowed to return.

“They tell us what we want to hear — the problem is lack of trust,” a US official told Axios as reported by the Turkish news agency.

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An Eye For an Eye

CROSSFIREARABIA – Israelis will not rest if the Palestinians don’t get their independent homeland and statehood to live free just as was the case before 1948 when Israel was forcibly created.

This present Israeli war on Gaza has shown that clearly.

While the Israeli war machine may have destroyed, nay, obliterated the whole of the enclave, the strip continues to be filled with resistance fighters who move above and below grounds with their weapons fighting their enemies.

Israel, its leaders, politicians and military, long propped up by American weapons have long known that but they continue to destroy rather than own up to Palestinian aspirations and the fact that the incessant conflict will not end otherwise.

In this war, slaughter, genocide – going into its second year now and shows no signs of stopping but on the contrary moving northwards to Lebanon – there developed a sense of equilibrium and proportionality although on a much smaller scale judging from the vast different of the protagonists.

Israel used massive bombs on civilians and sent them into a whirl of displacements, while Hamas continually fired rockets and missiles on the settlements and military bases surrounding Gaza and further beyond.

The immediate effect of that was the mass evacuation of the Israeli population from all these settlements, in effect as soon as the Israeli big guns started to ‘hammer’ the cities, town, villages and hamlets of northern Gaza soon after 7 October, 2023.

Displacement

Today, the Jewish settlements, more likely big towns and cities with high tech infrastructure stand empty; their populations have long been moved to hotels and guest houses by the extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu, for their safety.

They still wait their return but there is no end in sight as to when will this happen. The late Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, just before he was killed by Israel, said the occupation entity will not rest in peace, neither will the Jews return to their homes, until the bombs on Gaza stop.

Hezbollah had taken up the fight with Israel soon after 7 October as a support to Gaza through rocketing its northern parts with missiles. This process also set off a mass drove of Israelis to leave their homes, like their counterparts in the south, to be housed in a hotel accommodation away from the bombs and raging fires.

As the war genocide on Gaza continued in the following months, the return of these settler Israelis to their homes continued to be foggy, unknown. Many of these settlements and conurbations like Kiryat Shmona and Maalot today stand empty like ghost towns.

In Gaza around 2 million people out of a population of 2.2 million were forced into internal displacement, continually moving between areas from the north of Gaza to its southern border.

Likewise, the number of Israelis that were displaced was, initially estimated at 400,000 people with an extra 60,000 forced to leave when Hezbollah increased their missiles on the north after June 2024.

While they have been living in hotel accommodation many Israelis have been trying to get out of the country over the past months with the figures ranging from 500,000 up to a million.

Further to that about a quarter of Israelis polled by the Kan official channel, say they are truly thinking of leaving the country and 14 percent of them are supporters of Likud and the extremist rightwing parties. Indeed, soon after 7 October, the Ben Gurion Airport became filled with travelers as Hamas rockets started to land on Tel Aviv.

The airport is filled again today with travelers because of incoming missiles from Hezbollah from the north and the occasional ballistic missiles coming all the way from Yemen by the Houthis and/or the fright Israelis got from the recent incoming 200 missiles they saw in their skies from Iran.

There is no doubt that ordinary Israelis are under a lot of strain with sirens going off and on, all the time signaling for them, to go into the underground shelters. Video clips see them running asunder to the shelters, and who wouldn’t be scarred?

After all, the people of Gaza and now Lebanon are experiencing it all the time. For them however, there are no sirens, no warnings of 2000-pound bombs being dropped on their heads with no questions asked; their slaughter appear to be “manageable” foe western states who sell weapons to Israel.

The war can stop anytime. Hostages, around 110 from the original 250, can be returned anytime if there is a ceasefire but the Israeli prime minister is stuck on bringing them home by force, or so he says.

 Meanwhile Israelis are literally running. One videoclip in a Tel Aviv mall show people moving hastily to ahead, no doubt, to the underground shelters as the sirens blast all over.

Thus, there is a military equation that is being played out here: ‘You bomb us we will bomb you’. The Israeli army must realize that this is what is happening, and the stakes of the war game just keep getting higher and higher with Israel headed by Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, being lead to the abyss.  

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