Hezbollah’s secretary general Sheikh Naim Qassem hails the Lebanese resistance movement’s fighters over their stellar performance in the face of months-long deadly Israeli escalation.
“The sacrifices that were made in the face of the enemy’s violations were very great in number,” he said on Friday in his first televised speech following the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel.
“You exercised patience and Jihad. Your sons fought off the enemy in the valleys so they can crush the enemy. We thank God that this patience bore fruit,” he added, addressing the Lebanese people, Press TV reported.
The comments followed thousands of retaliatory operations by Hezbollah against Israeli targets, which forced the regime to enter a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon.
This occurred approximately 13 months after Israel intensified its aggression, claiming the lives of at least 3,961 people.
Sheikh Qassem referred to the regime’s ramping up the deadly aggression even further over the past 63 days with the aim of “destroying” Hezbollah and stopping its strikes that had driven hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers from the occupied Palestinian territories.
Besides seeking to eliminate the movement, the additional escalation was aimed at enabling the settlers to return to the occupied territories as well as being an attempt at “creating a new Middle East,” he noted.
“The Israeli regime expected to realize its goals in short term after delivering blows to our leadership and equipment,” the resistance leader stated, referring to the regime’s assassinating several high-ranking Hezbollah officials, including his predecessor, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah, however, managed to persevere and resist on the frontline and began “crushing the enemy’s interior front to the point that it forced it into a defensive position,” he said.
bd-pratidin/GR
