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<div class="gmail-inner-article-top"><h1 class="gmail-">Hezbollah chief says Israel pushed resistance to open battle 'on all fronts'</h1><p class="gmail-">Nasrallah pledged that Hezbollah's response to Israel killing a top commander in Beirut 'will not be symbolic or a formality'</p><div class="gmail-another-name"><p><a href="https://thecradle.co/authors/news-desk-9" style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">News Desk</a></p></div><div class="gmail-another-name" style="margin-top:16px"><p><span>AUG 1, 2024 - </span><font size="1"><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/hezbollah-chief-says-israel-pushed-resistance-to-open-battle-on-all-fronts">https://thecradle.co/articles/hezbollah-chief-says-israel-pushed-resistance-to-open-battle-on-all-fronts</a></font></p></div></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-img"><img src="http://thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com/public/articles/43e1a724-5019-11ef-99b1-00163e02c055.webp" alt="" width="394" height="222" style="margin-right: 0px;"><span>(Photo Credit: Marwan Naamani/dpa/Getty Images)</span></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-content"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-col-md-8 gmail-col-sm-7"><div class="gmail-article-content"><span><p>The
Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, announced on 1 August
that the Lebanese resistance is no longer just "a support front” in the
fight against Israel and that the response to the assassination of top
commander Fuad Shukr “<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)">is a foregone conclusion.”</span></p><p>“We
are beyond the stage of being a 'support front'; we are now in an open
battle against the Israeli enemy, on all frontiers – we have entered a
new stage,” Nasrallah said, stressing that operations during the next
several days “are not a response to the martyrdom of Mr. Fuad Shukr.”</p><p>“The
enemy and those behind the enemy must await our inevitable response [to
Shukr's killing], no discussion or debate, and between us are the days,
nights, and the battlefield," the resistance leader added, calling the <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-bombs-residential-building-south-of-beirut-leaving-dozens-of-casualties">attack on Dahye</a> “part of the US-Israeli war on our region” and stressing that “there will be no solution except to stop the aggression on <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-jets-rain-fire-across-gaza-on-300th-day-of-genocide">Gaza</a>.”</p><p>“The
enemy does not know where our response will come from, whether from the
north or south of Palestine, and whether it will be separate or
simultaneous [with the rest of the Resistance Axis] … We will carry out a
real, practical response – it will not be a symbolic response or a
formality.”</p><p>“You (Israel) will cry a lot because you do not know
which red lines you have crossed,” Nasrallah said during a televised
speech delivered as part of the funeral proceedings for Shukr, who was
killed in an Israeli airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut earlier
this week.</p><p>He then reminded Israeli authorities that the
resistance can “quickly fill any vacancy in our organizational
structure, we have a generation of well-trained commanders …
Assassination of the leaders doesn’t affect us; experience shows that
the resistance grows and thrives.”</p><p>Nasrallah also spoke out against the Israeli claim that Shukr was behind the attack that killed <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/druze-in-occupied-golan-tell-israel-no-war-in-the-name-of-our-children">12 civilians</a>
over the weekend in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, saying Tel Aviv
“refuses to accept that what happened in Majdal Shams would be caused by
an Israeli interceptor missile.”</p><p>“We have enough courage to admit if [the Majdal Shams incident] was our mistake,” Nasrallah highlighted.</p><p>The Hezbollah leader later spoke about the assassination of Hamas politburo chief <a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/entire-resistance-axis-will-respond-to-haniyeh-assassination-irgc">Ismail Haniyeh</a>
in Tehran, saying that the Islamic Republic “considers Haniyeh’s
assassination as an attack on its national security and sovereignty.”</p><p>“Do
[the Israelis] really imagine that they would kill Ismail Haniyeh in
Tehran and Iran would keep mum?” Nasrallah wondered, stressing that
“Imam Khamenei's words after the assassination of Haniyeh are harsher
than those after the attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus because
it was an attack inside Iran. Imam Khamenei considers it an issue of
honor.”</p><p>Nasrallah finished his speech by reminding supporters and
adversaries of Hezbollah that “Our commanders, fighters, women, and
children will be martyred; we are united in sacrifice – this is the
reality of resistance, and this is our path until the day of judgment.”</p></span></div></div></div></div>
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