Nasrallah threatens to retaliate if Israel acts ‘stupidly’

(A7) Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Saturday sent an explicit threat to Israel and warned it not to carry out any action against Lebanon that may lead to a military response against it.

In a speech he gave, Nasrallah commented on what he perceives as the “desecration” of Al-Aqsa Mosque by the “Zionists”, a reference to visits by Jews to the Temple Mount, and said, “It is imperative that the enemy hears a firm position from all the Muslims”.

“This area will not calm down until the cancerous growth (Israel -ed.) is uprooted, and today the Palestinian people are walking the path of resistance and they are fighting,” Nasrallah stated.

Nasrallah also said that “the Palestinian people today believe more than before in (the path of) the resistance and they rely on it and the axis of the resistance in the region, they offer sacrifices and carry out the jihad with knives, explosives, guns and rocks.”

Therefore, Nasrallah said, “It is the right of the fighting people that all the free people in the world support it,” stressing that Hezbollah and its military arm support the Palestinian Arab people as much as they can.

On the tensions along the border with Israel, Nasrallah said that “Lebanon is the one under attack since the entity of the enemy is still occupying territory from our land.”

Nasrallah claimed that Israel occupied territory from the village of Ghajar “and brazenly talks about provocations by the resistance along the border.”

In a direct threat to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Hezbollah leader, said, “Beware of any stupid act, since the resistance will not fold or renounce its responsibility to protect or deter, and it will be ready for any option and to confront any mistake or stupid act.”

The Hezbollah leader regularly threatens Israel, and has used current internal tensions within Israel to claim that the country’s end is approaching.

Several days ago, Nasrallah took pleasure in the protests which started in Israel following the Knesset’s approval of the law that would reduce the use of the reasonableness standard.

“Today in particular is the darkest day in the history of the entity (Israel),” Nasrallah said. “As some of its people say: This day puts Israel on a path to collapse and disappearance, God willing.”