A snap shot of the head of Hezbollah Naim Qassem speaking during his televised speech. Photo courtesy of Al-Jazeera.
"We are facing aggression... our choice is to confront it until the ultimate sacrifice, and we will not surrender," the Hezbollah leader declared in his first speech since his party launched rockets towards Israel on Monday and Israel began a bombing campaign in Lebanon.
The leader of Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran, rejected the notion that his party started the current round of fighting, saying, "What Israel did after the rocket salvo was not a response. It was an aggression that had been prepared in advance."
On Sunday evening, Israel amped its bombing of Lebanon, striking Southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and the Dahiyeh district of Beirut, after Hezbollah fired rockets at an Israeli military site following the US/Israeli assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the spiritual leader of Shia Muslims around the world.
Qassem said that his party has exercised restraint for 15 months as Israel breached the November 2024 ceasefire, brokered by Washington, more than 1,000 times, with daily airstrikes on the country that killed more than 500 people and wounded hundreds more, and refused to end the occupation of the south.
"The Israelis killed Lebanese at the rate of one killed and two or three wounded every day for 500 days during the so-called ceasefire," lamented Qassem, adding that "the party's patience has limits."
"Hezbollah and its Islamic resistance are responding to the Israeli-American aggression and this is a legitimate right... For us, this is an existential defence," stressed Qassem.
The Middle East war expanded to Lebanon on Monday as the Israeli occupation army began a massive bombing campaign across the country and pushed more ground troops into more towns and villages in southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese authorities said on Wednesday that Israeli airstrikes on Dahiya and elsewhere in the country have killed at least 72 people and displaced more than 83,000.
The Lebanese government on Monday announced the "immediate ban" of Hezbollah's military activities and demanded the party surrender its weapons, months after it committed to a gradual disarmament of the party, which the party has repeatedly rejected.
In his speech, Qassem criticised the new decision by the Lebanese government, saying: "Instead of the Lebanese government moving to condemn the Israeli-American aggression and look for ways to confront it, it turned against the resistance to complete its error and align itself with Israeli demands."
"The topic of the resistance and the weapons of the resistance is not a subject of dispute for anyone or with anyone. It is a legitimate right. We are fighting in Lebanon in defence of our people, the future of our children and our country," he added.
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