|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
In a defiant speech, encouraged by the current divisions in Israeli society, the Hezbollah leader called Israel a “cancerous growth” that must be destroyed.
By: JNS & WIN Staff
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded on Sunday to threats made a day earlier by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.
“We are not impressed by Nasrallah’s bunker threats. On the day of the test, he will find us standing shoulder to shoulder, it is not worth it for him to test us,” Netanyahu said, speaking at the opening of the weekly Cabinet meeting.
In a speech in Beirut on Saturday, Nasrallah mentioned a security summit Netanyahu was scheduled to hold on Sunday with top military officials, accused the Jewish state of occupying Lebanese territory and called for its destruction.
“They say that the Israeli prime minister will meet with his generals tomorrow,” he said. “I tell them: Hezbollah in Lebanon will not hesitate and will be ready for any development or stupidity on their part.”
Nasrallah continued: “The Zionist entity is the source of evil and a cancerous growth in our region. Our region will not calm down until this cancerous growth and this germ of corruption is removed. We in Hezbollah stand by the resistance of the Palestinian people.”
Netanyahu was scheduled to hold a high-level security summit on Sunday to discuss the growing threat from Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and senior Israel Defense Forces officials were to brief the premier on the escalating situation over recent months in a meeting that was delayed a week due to Netanyahu’s hospitalization on July 22.
Meanwhile, according to Israeli media reports, the IDF is bolstering its forces in the North in preparation for possible provocations by the Iran-backed terror group, which in April established an outpost on the Israeli side of the demarcation line. Part of the outpost was removed earlier this month, and Nasrallah has threatened confrontation if Israel attempts to dismantle the rest.
IDF brass were expected to tell Netanyahu that there is an increasing danger of escalation in the north but that the assessment is that Hezbollah is not interested in a broader war.
Nasrallah, according to the IDF, sees Israel’s internal divisions as a “historic weakness.”
Netanyahu’s meeting included Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, Mossad Director David Barnea, National Security Council Chief Tzachi Hanegbi, IDF intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva, Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar, and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.
“The prime minister accepted the recommendations and courses of action proposed by the IDF and the defense establishment,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.
The officials warned Netanyahu that any “missteps by [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah could ignite a conflict along the entire front,” Israel’s Channel 12 reported.
Meanwhile, in videos posted to social media on Sunday, several Hezbollah operatives were caught violating a UNIFIL boundary, while waving the group’s flag, and crossing from norther Ghajar, considered part of Lebanon, and southern Ghajar, considered part of Israel.
The village of Ghajar was split by the UN in 2000 when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon.
Earlier on Sunday, Israeli media reported that Gallant had recently pre-approved several options for IDF action against Hezbollah and raised the alert level along the entire northern border.
“[Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah has been weighing for a while whether to take chances at the border,” a senior security official was cited by the Walla news site.
(JNS.org & worldisraelnews.com)
