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Hezbollah official says Netanyahu wants war to drag on for years

July 16, 2024 at 12:48 pm

Deputy Secretary-General of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, Sheikh Naim Qassem, delivers a speech during a rally in Beirut on October 13, 2023. [Photo by ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images]

A senior member of the Lebanese Hezbollah group has said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the war in Gaza to continue, even if it drags on for years. “However,” insisted Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem, “he will not win it.”

The sheikh made his comment at a Hezbollah gathering in Beirut. The movement has accused Netanyahu of “deception and lying” by claiming that he agrees to ceasefire proposals in Gaza.

“Netanyahu sets preconditions for a deal that nobody would accept,” said the Hezbollah official, including the right for the occupation state to “resume fighting” after phase one of the deal, which would see a ceasefire for 48 days. “Is it reasonable for Hamas and the resistance to agree to a ceasefire for 48 days and release the [Israeli] captives, and then say, ‘Go ahead and continue fighting.’ Is this reasonable?”

He suggested that if Netanyahu thinks he will win, he is delusional. “Even if he commits more massacres, in the end he will fall and Western values will fall with him forever.”

Commenting on the position of the US, Qassem alleged that its priority is for Israel to be comfortable. “We have seen that the US is not serious about ending the war, the failure of American pressure and Israel’s determination to continue.”

If the war lasts for many more months, he added, the resistance in Gaza and the Palestinian people will persevere no matter how long it lasts. “They have the capabilities and will to continue until victory is theirs, by not allowing Israel to achieve its goals, whether through annihilation or surrender,” insisted Qassem. “I believe that there is now an important opportunity to put pressure on Israel to stop. Now there is an opportunity for the Arab and Islamic countries to stand up courageously for once. I do not tell them to fight Israel. But whoever has economic or political relations [with Israel], cut them, and whoever makes promises to Israel, stop them.”

Regarding the resistance in Lebanon, Sheikh Qassem concluded by saying: “The resistance in Lebanon is no longer a project, but has become a basic pillar of the state. That is, after today we cannot say a strong Lebanon, an independent Lebanon, or a future Lebanon unless its components include its people, its sects, its resistance, its army and its people.”

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