As reported by Reuters and The Guardian, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that the October 7 attacks by Hamas militants in southern Israel “dealt a serious blow to the normalization efforts” that have taken place between various Arab governments and Israel in recent years.

The last country to come close to normalizing relations with Israel before the Hamas attacks was the great traditional enemy of the Jewish state, Saudi Arabia, under the auspices of the United States, now led by Joe Biden in a Democratic administration, but accelerated by his Republican predecessor (and again a presidential rival election in 2024 Donald Trump).

As of 2020, in agreements brokered by the Trump administration, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan have agreed to normalize relations despite the continued occupation of the Palestinian territories.

In his ongoing speech in Beirut, Nasrallah said the attacks by Hamas, which he described as the Islamist militant group’s preferred name, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, were not just a blow to that normalization but a collapse of Israel’s deterrence capacity.

“Israel’s goal is quite clear”

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accuses Israel that its “real goal” is to expel all Palestinians from Gaza.

Nasrallah pointed to “people forced to leave their homes in Gaza and the West Bank and even in southern Lebanon to some extent,” the Hezbollah leader continued.

“I saw great dangers … but at the same time I saw resistance and defiance … a refusal to surrender” and leave Gaza, he said.

We will fight “without limits” if Israel declares war on Lebanon

The leader of the powerful pro-Iranian Hezbollah warned on Wednesday that his group would fight “without limits” if Israel declared war on Lebanon, a day after killing a second Palestinian group, Hamas, near Beirut, AFP reported.

“At the moment, we are fighting on the front lines in a calculated way (…), but if the enemy decides to start a war against Lebanon, we will fight without limits, without restrictions, without borders (…),” Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech , which was broadcast live on television.

“We are not afraid of war,” he insisted.

Nasrallah accuses the US of “obstructing the end of the war in Gaza”

He also stated that “it is the Americans who are preventing the end of the war in Gaza” by providing full government support to Israel in response to Hamas attacks on southern Israel on October 7, including by taking hostages, many of whom are still in custody. in Gaza.

Israel has killed more than 22,000 people in Gaza, most of them Palestinian civilians, and wounded more than 60,000, according to leaders of Hamas, which rules the besieged Gaza Strip.

Earlier, Nasrallah passionately exclaimed: “From the river to the sea, the land of Palestine is for the Palestinians and only for the Palestinian people.”

Many interpret the phrase “from the river to the sea” as an anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist call for the destruction of the state of Israel, while others interpret it as a simple request for the liberation of the Palestinian people and the establishment of a universally recognized Palestinian state.

A dangerous crime

Hassan Nasrallah called the killing of the leader of its ally Hamas a “dangerous crime” and assured that he “will not go unpunished”, echoing a Hezbollah statement released after the attack on Tuesday night.

Hamas’s second leader, Saleh al-Aruri, who lived in exile in Lebanon, was killed on Tuesday in a drone attack in a suburb of Beirut, the Lebanese capital, in an attack attributed to Israel.

Aruri, the exiled commander of Hamas forces in the occupied West Bank and a veteran Hamas leader who spent 17 years in Israeli prisons, was deputy to the Islamist group’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh. So far, Israel has not released any official information regarding the killing of Saleh al-Aruri, six people were killed in the attack.

This is the first time since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip – the war continues for the 88th day – the Israeli army attacks the capital of Lebanon, Reuters and AFP note. Clashes between the Israeli army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a group allied to Palestinian Hamas, have so far been confined to the border areas in southern Lebanon.

On the same topic:

• The Israeli government is negotiating the “resettlement” of Palestinians from Gaza after the war. “Congo willing to accept immigrants”
• Israel’s national security minister calls for a mass evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza