by Times of Israel staff
Nasrallah says Israel supporting jihadist group, touts Shiite group’s victory over IDF 15 years after withdrawal from southern Lebanon
Hezbollah leader Hassan
Nasrallah on Sunday called the Islamic State an “existential threat” to
the Shiite group and touted what he called his Lebanese militia’s
victory over Israel on the 15th anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal
from southern Lebanon.
Speaking
to the Lebanese Shiite group’s supporters from the southern town of
Nabatiyeh, Nasrallah said Israel would have conquered all of Lebanon
hadn’t his militia fought against it. He called Israel’s withdrawal from
southern Lebanon in 2000 “a clear, strong and pure victory for the
resistance.”
Monday marks the 15th anniversary of the IDF’s
withdrawal from southern Lebanon. After years of guerrilla warfare
waged by Hezbollah, which fired Katyusha rockets at Israeli towns in the
Galilee and launched raids on Israeli troops, the IDF in 2000 retreated
to the Blue Line 18 years after invading Lebanon in 1982.
Nasrallah said that Hezbollah would remain in
southern Lebanon despite waging a war against Syrian rebel groups,
including the Islamic State, along Lebanon’s eastern border.
“Our eyes are turned toward the main enemy in
the main campaign,” he said, referring to Israel. “We have not abandoned
this front and will not abandon it. We must be present today on two
fronts. We continue to be active on the front with Israel and other
issues are not distracting us.”
“You should know the resistance is at the
height of its readiness and the enemy knows it even more than the people
of Lebanon. This is why they fear the resistance and continue their
psychological warfare,” he said.
He also acknowledged for the first time that
Hezbollah was fighting throughout all of Syria, and not just in areas
near the border with Lebanon.
“We are fighting alongside our Syrian
brothers, alongside the army and the people and the popular resistance
in Damascus and Aleppo and Deir Ezzor and Qusayr and Hasakeh and Idlib,”
he said.
“We are present today in many places and we will be present in all the places in Syria that this battle requires.”
The Lebanese Shiite leader said US efforts to
halt the Sunni terrorist group’s advances had failed. The number of
sorties conducted by forces of the US-led coalition’s air war against
Islamic State in several months was far lower than those Israel carried
out against Hezbollah in Lebanon and against Hamas in Gaza in a much
shorter time period.
On Saturday Nasrallah said all of the Shiite
group’s forces may soon need to mobilize to defend the country against
the Sunni extremists.
The Islamic State “is not stronger than Israel
and the US, and the region’s peoples already defeated Israel and the
US,” he said.
Nasrallah said one of the reasons Israel has
remained in a powerful positions over the years is the “policy of
partition the region has adopted.” He called on the Arab world to unite,
warning that the threat posed by the Islamic State “is not less than
the Israeli danger.”
He warned domestic opponents against remaining
silent in the face of Islamic State brutality. “The first victims of
[IS] in Lebanon will be al Mustakbal,” naming a Sunni Lebanese group
which opposes Shiite Hezbollah. “We must take initiative and look for
options to fight these armed groups. We face a danger today unlike any
other in history, the threat is against all human entities,” he said.
“The victory of the resistance against Israel
is a blessing from Allah. [Hezbollah] stood its ground for 18 years
until the Zionist entity was humiliated and escaped Lebanon in
disgrace,” Nasrallah said.
A sign in Nabatiyeh, where Hezbollah
supporters were watching the speech projected on a massive screen, read
in Hebrew and Arabic: “Invasion of the Galilee – the promise will not be
broken.”
Hezbollah has in the past threatened to invade
Israel’s northern region and Military Intelligence officials assess the
group may attempt to take control of a northern community during a
future war.
Israeli defense officials warned Hezbollah indirectly last week,
when a report in the New York Times based on aerial photos given the
paper by the IDF showed the extent to which terror infrastructure was
embedded in communities in southern Lebanon. The paper quoted senior
officials as saying that the close proximity of terror bases to civilian
homes will not deter the IDF from attacking Hezbollah in case of
conflict.
— AFP contributed to this report.
Times of Israel staff
Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com/hezbollah-chief-islamic-state-poses-existential-threat-akin-to-israel/
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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