Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said Saturday that his terror group does not seek escalation with Israel, but will respond in kind to any Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon.
“We wanted to tell our Israeli enemy that any airstrike against Lebanon will absolutely be met with a response — but in an appropriate, proportional way,” he said.
Nasrallah made the remarks in a televised address celebrating Hezbollah’s self-described “victory” in the 2006 Second Lebanon War against Israel. The speech was scheduled before tensions escalated between Israel and the terror group along the Lebanese border earlier this week.
Israel struck targets in south Lebanon late Wednesday in response to what the Israel Defense Forces said was rocket fire by Palestinian terror groups in the area.
The next day, Hezbollah fired missiles toward open areas in northern Israel. Israel responded with several rounds of artillery strikes. Witnesses reported artillery fire by Israeli forces on the Lebanese side of Shebaa Farms and outside the town of Kafr Shouba after the attack.
Hezbollah also released a video of the assault showing a mobile rocket launcher maneuvering into position, raising the launcher and firing the salvo of rockets at Israel.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gives a televised speech on August 30, 2020. (Screen capture: Al-Manar)
Until Friday’s barrage, Hezbollah had not taken responsibility for rocket fire toward Israel since the 2006 war. Israel had not publicly conducted airstrikes in Lebanon since 2014, although Israeli planes are said to frequently enter Lebanese airspace.
“What happened over the past few days was a dangerous development, something that has not happened for 15 years,” Nasrallah said, waving away the 2014 airstrikes as a minor exception.
For now, Nasrallah said, Hezbollah is confining its response to open military zones in Har Dov, which Lebanese see as occupied territory. Israel captured the area from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War.
“This is a message that is clear as day: You bombed open areas, so we bombed open areas,” he said. “This maintains the existing rules of engagement.”
Nasrallah claimed his terror group deliberately chose to fire rockets at Israel during the day so as to avoid “terrifying Israeli residents.” Nonetheless, several Israeli residents in northern Israel were treated by medics for anxiety attacks following the rocket fire.
“We chose the [Sheba] farms because it is a military zone without any civilians or farmers. There are other open areas with agricultural workers — we chose everything precisely,” Nasrallah said.
But the Hezbollah chief added that if Israel continues to conduct airstrikes in Lebanon, Hezbollah may broaden its range of fire.
“Yesterday, we targeted open areas near the Shebaa farms, to send a message that matters had gone up a notch. We may still go up a second or third level,” Nasrallah said.
He said that future Hezbollah retaliatory rockets could target “the Galilee or parts of the Lebanese Golan that Israel has occupied.”
Israeli artillery fires toward Lebanon from a position near the northern town of Kiryat Shmona following Hezbollah rocket fire from the Lebanese side of the border, on August 6, 2021 (JALAA MAREY / AFP)
Lebanon has been undergoing a spiraling economic and political crisis in recent months, with some observers warning the ever-fragile state could collapse entirely.
Nasrallah said that Hezbollah will not allow the domestic political situation to affect its ability to fight Israel.
“We always say — we do not want war. But we are not afraid of it. We are ready for it, and we wait for it each day. And we shall win, with God’s help, as it is His promise and that of His prophet,” Nasrallah said.
The Israeli army also says that it hopes to contain the situation on the northern border without a major escalation. Military spokesperson Ran Kochav told reporters Friday that Israel has “no intention of going to war, but we do not want to turn the Lebanon border into a line of confrontation.”
Kochav argued that Hezbollah was already effectively deterred, as the terror group had only targeted open areas, rather than population centers.
Nasrallah, for his part, insisted Saturday that it was Israel that feared a broader conflict with Hezbollah, not the opposite. He claimed that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had “seen with his own eyes the failure of the Israeli military institutions” during the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah. The premier has indeed voiced his frustrations over what he viewed was the ill-prepared nature of the IDF during the Second Lebanon War. However, Bennett has said that the army is in a far better state today.
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