Hassan Nasrallah
Photo: AFP
Israeli enemy is not forgotten, says Hezbollah's Lebanese mouthpiece
Editor of Al-Akhbar says Hezbollah's statement on airstrike on its base thwarted Israeli celebration of the attack.
Hezbollah has not sacrificed its opposition to Israel for the sake of the war in Syria, wrote the editor of Lebanon's heavily pro-Hezbollah newspaper Al-Akhbar on Thursday, shedding light on the group's reaction to a recent airstrike on one of its bases that was widely attributed to Israel.
The attack Monday night is believed to have targeted advanced missiles and launchers transported from Syria to a Hezbollah warehouse in Lebanon, close to the two countries' shared frontier.
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Ibrahim Al-Amin claimed that, despite Israel's view that Hezbollah is preoccupied with fighting beside Syrian President Assad in the war in Syria and with internal Lebanese pressures, the organization's leader Hassan Nasrallah told his defense officials that they should operate under the assumption that the group has three areas of interest: Syria, Lebanon and fighting Israel.
Al-Amin also said that Hezbollah would make good on its pledge to respond to the attack at a time and in a manner of its own choosing.
"It is fair to say quite simply that the resistance in Lebanon (Hezbollah) is unlike other agents hostile to Israel," he wrote. "When it says it will respond to attacks, it means that it will respond, and quite simply it will be in such a way so as to make the enemy understand that its attempt to change the rules of the game is unacceptable."
He said that, "The aggression this time was not a defense operation in the form of an assassination, rather it was a clear military operation, which widens the parameters and the options available to Hezbollah."
Al-Amin concluded by saying that the announcement by Hezbollah on Wednesday had achieved the group's first aim – "thwarting the celebratory atmosphere in Israel in the wake of the strike." He also employed a somewhat vulgar analogy, likening Israel to a man boasting about his sexual exploits to the rest of the world.
Israel has not officially confirmed that it carried out the strike, but an unnamed Israeli official told Time Magazine on Tuesday that the Jewish state was behind the attack. The Lebanese media also reported that four Hezbollah officials had been killed in the strike, which the group denied.
