BICOM

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah issued a stark warning to Israel on Sunday in a recorded speech to supporters for the Ashoura holiday.

Nasrallah addressed a large rally in the Shiite neighbourhood of Beirut remotely from his bunker via video link. He said that “the current Israeli government, presided over by [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is leading its people to death and destruction”. Nasrallah claimed the Israeli government “is using every possible excuse to drag the region into war” and did not have “a correct assessment of where this war will lead if they ignite it”.

Nasrallah also said that Hezbollah wouldn’t remain silent about the continued Israeli “threats to Lebanon” and its “continued aggression in Syria under the banner of preventing the resistance from obtaining military capabilities”.

Since the start of the Syrian Civil War, Israel has targeted more than one hundred convoys of advanced weapons on their way to Hezbollah or other Iranian-backed militias, as well as weapon storehouses located in Syria. In addition, Netanyahu said in August that Iran was building weapons factories in Syria and Lebanon, designed for Hezbollah to use against Israel.

Nasrallah made similar threats against Israel earlier this year, which prompted Intelligence Minister Israel Katz to say that if Nasrallah dared to fire at Israel’s home front or attack its national infrastructure, “all of Lebanon will be hit”.

In his speech yesterday Nasrallah also attempted to distinguish Hezbollah’s enemies between Zionist and non-Zionist Jews, in which he claimed Hezbollah has “from the very beginning” said that “our war is against the Zionists who occupy Palestinian land, not against the Jews”.

He then called on Jews who emigrated to Israel to “leave and return to the countries from which they came so they are not fuel for any war that the idiotic Netanyahu government takes them to”.

Responding to the speech, Security Cabinet member and Minister for Housing and Construction MK Yoav Gallant said: “Nasrallah speaks from his bunker, and he has good reasons to do so. If he makes a mistake and starts a war, we will send Lebanon back to the Stone Age.”