A screenshot from Hezbollah's Al Manar TV shows the group's deputy leader Naim Qassem delivering a speech from an undisclosed location on October 15, 2024. — AFP
Hezbollah's deputy leader Naim Qassem cautioned Israelis on Tuesday that the sole resolution to the ongoing conflict was a ceasefire, which would enable residents of northern Israel to return. He pledged that his group would not be vanquished.
"I am addressing the Israeli home front: the solution is a ceasefire," Qassem stated in his third speech since an Israeli strike claimed the life of former leader Hassan Nasrallah. "I am not speaking from a position of weakness, because if Israel does not desire (a ceasefire), we will persist," he added.
"The resistance (Hezbollah) will not be defeated because this is its land," he emphasized. "Following a ceasefire through indirect agreement", residents of northern Israel will "return to the north and the subsequent steps will be outlined", Qassem said.
"Since the Israeli adversary targeted all of Lebanon, we have the right from a defensive stance to target any location" in Israel, "whether the center, the north, or the south", he declared. "We will select the point that we deem suitable".
Nearly a year of cross-border fire exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah escalated into full-scale war on September 23, with Israel heavily bombarding Hezbollah strongholds in southern and eastern Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs. Israel later disclosed it had commenced ground operations in southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah fighters and Israeli forces have been clashing at the border, with the Iran-backed group persistently asserting it has thwarted Israeli infiltration attempts.
In the pre-recorded video also disseminated on social media, Qassem was seen seated at a desk with small Lebanese and Hezbollah flags and a framed image of Nasrallah, in contrast to the deputy leader's two previous, dimly lit speeches since Nasrallah's demise on September 27.
Qassem stated that his group had initiated an "equation of harming the enemy", repeatedly striking the Haifa area in northern Israel and warned that "with the continuation of the war, the number of uninhabited" Israeli towns will rise. "More than two million people will be in the danger zone," he noted.
Hezbollah established what it terms a "support front" for Gaza from Lebanon, launching cross-border assaults into Israel the day after its Palestinian ally Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel ignited war in the Gaza Strip.
