Hezbollah vows to escalate Israel fight after civilian attacks
The leader of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia, said it would escalate its fight against Israel following a worsening spate of attacks between the two sides this week.
Hassan Nasrallah said the group, based in Lebanon, would retaliate against Israel targeting its positions and killing civilians in recent days. Hezbollah will hit “not just army sites,” he said in a speech on Friday.
“The enemy will pay the price of spilling the blood of our people with blood,” he said in a speech broadcast on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV.
A missile barrage on a northern Israeli town and an army base there killed one soldier on Wednesday. That prompted Israel’s military to launch airstrikes on several southern Lebanese villages, killing eight people and a Hezbollah commander. While Hezbollah didn’t claim the attack on the Israeli town, called Safed, it came from areas it controls.
Safed is about 9 miles from Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, far deeper into the country than other places targeted by Hezbollah since an uptick in violence when the Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7.
Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire almost daily since then, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis and Lebanese to evacuate their homes. Still, the skirmishes between them have been kept within what each side defines as the implicit rules of engagement – civilians aren’t directly targeted and the areas of attack are close to the border.
Israel has been keen not to open another front while the war with Hamas continues.
Yet many Israeli generals and politicians are saying Hezbollah’s attacks need a firmer response and that time for a diplomatic solution is running out.
Hezbollah “continues to threaten our communities,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Friday. “We will ensure security and bring our citizens home – via diplomacy or military means,” he said, referring to ensuring people can return to their evacuated homes.
Nasrallah, 63, who lives in hiding but has his speeches broadcast on big screens in Lebanon, said he “will not tolerate harm to civilians.”
His army can target anywhere in Israel from the northern town of Kiryat Shmona to Eilat in the south, he said. He urged other groups allied to Iran to continue attacking U.S. or Israeli assets and cited Yemen’s Houthis, who’s assaults on vessels in the Red Sea have roiled the shipping world.
Hezbollah and Hamas, also backed by Iran, both vow to destroy Israel and are designated as terrorist groups by the U.S.
Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack killed 1,200 people in Israel. Israel’s retaliatory air and ground assault on Gaza has killed more than 28,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, enraging much of the Arab and Muslim world.
Hezbollah has said it won’t stop firing at Israel until there’s a cease-fire in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said fighting there must continue until Hamas is destroyed. He pulled Israel out of talks in Cairo on Thursday designed to agree a truce and the release of some hostages held by Hamas.
Hezbollah has used missiles and drones to target Israeli army posts on the border since Oct. 8. Israel has warned it is ready to push the Shiite group’s fighters away from the border by force if necessary.
A war with Hezbollah could be a tougher challenge for Israel than that with Hamas. Hezbollah is the most powerful militia in the Middle East and is thought by Israeli intelligence to have more than 100,000 rockets and missiles, a much bigger arsenal that what Hamas had before Oct. 7.
A conflict would also be devastating for Lebanon, a country already dealing with an economic crisis and triple-digit inflation.
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(–With assistance from Omar Tamo.)