Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Sunday the group would kill an Israeli soldier to avenge the slaying of one its fighters in Syria and would not be drawn into clashes on the Lebanon-Israel border.
The comment came several days after Hezbollah troops fired at Israeli soldiers patrolling Israel's border with Lebanon in response to the killing of a Hezbollah operative in Syria in an alleged IDF attack two months ago. No Israeli troops had been hurt in the incident.
"Israel needs to understand that when they kill one of our mujahideen, we will kill one of their soldiers. This is the equation," Nasrallah said in a televised speech, adding that it was only a matter of time.
The group tried to launch a revenge attack shortly after the killing of the operative by sending its special forces team to infiltrate the border with Israel along Mount Dov. The attempt, however proved unsuccessful and the terror squad was killed.
The leader added, however, the group will not engage in clashes along the border any longer because that would "waste the blood of our martyrs and our equation".
“We issued a statement saying that our operative had been killed in a bombing in Syria," he said. "Israel became frightened and decided to raise alert levels on its border, evacuate its outposts and cancel the patrols. The Israeli army began sending robots looking like soldiers, they want us to attack the robots and finish the story.
“It is the army that considers itself the strongest in the region. These measures and the IDF's attacks in the wake of the incidents on the border are an expression of panic."
Nasrallah added the terror group doesn’t seek “revenge” but rather “punishment for the murderers” of its operative.
"If we wanted to respond just to raise morale and to show it on the news, we would have done it on the first day,” he said. “The resistance could hit any [IDF] outpost, film it and post it on social media and television and the story would be over. That is not our goal.”
He added that Israeli soldiers are terrified of Hezbollah and "hide like mice".
"In the end, the soldiers of the occupation will come out of their hiding places, we will hit them and carry out our retaliation."
3 View gallery
Israel fires flares into south Lebanon after fire is opened at IDF troops
(Photo: Adir Vanano)
After two Hezbollah members were killed in Damascus in 2019, Nasrallah vowed the group would respond if Israel killed any more Hezbollah fighters inside Syria, where they deployed as part of Iranian-backed efforts to support President Bashar al-Assad in a war that spiralled out of 2011 anti-government protests.
Israel has stepped up strikes on Syria in recent months in what Western intelligence sources say is a shadow war, approved by Washington, that has undermined Iran’s military power in the region without triggering a major increase in hostilities.