Hezbollah declares ‘open-ended battle of reckoning’ with Israel

Hezbollah has declared an open-ended battle of reckoning with Israel despite President Herzog insisting he was not interested in war, while Britain’s David Lammy has called for an immediate ceasefire.

The Iran-backed military group’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, said the force had entered a new phase of its battle with Israel, warning: ‘But as we are pained, you will also be pained’.

His comments were made during a funeral for a top commander killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut‘s southern suburb following days of surprise attacks that have wounded thousands of people in Lebanon and killed members of the Hezbollah.

Qassem vowed the ongoing conflict will destroy Israel’s economy and told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will not achieve his goals.

The deputy leader said Hezbollah, which has lost several senior military leaders in recent months, has ‘returned stronger, and the frontline will witness this’.    

Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel for a wave of explosions that hit pagers and walkie-talkies belonging to Hezbollah members on Tuesday and Wednesday, killing at least 37 people – including two children – and wounding about 3,000.

The attacks were widely blamed on Israel, which earlier denied having any involvement in the attacks.     

Speaking on Sky News on Sunday morning, the Israeli president warned that Israel is in a ‘dangerous situation’ and that there is ‘clearly the potential of escalating dramatically’.

Israel had made no comments regarding their involvement in the fatal attacks before this morning, where the president said he ‘rejects out of hand any connection to this or that source of operation’.

‘There are many enemies of Hezbollah out there, quite a few these days. Hezbollah has been choking Lebanon, destroying Lebanon, creating havoc in Lebanon again and again and again. We are here simply to defend ourselves. That’s all we do,’ he added.

‘All I would say is that just at the opening of the Olympic Games 12 Israeli children of the Druze religion were murdered by a terrible missile attack, a rocket attack by Hezbollah in Majdal Shams where they were playing football.’

He added: ‘There are terrible tragedies in this war and we never want to get there, but we have the inherent right to defend ourselves and the fact is that houses have been demolished, Israelis were killed, Muslims, Christians, Druze and Jews all in the northern part of Israel where they live peacefully.

‘They are evacuated from their home for a year and Hezbollah keeps on sending its missiles against our people endlessly – at the end you have the right to defend yourself.’

When asked about whether Israel is now at war with Lebanon, Herzog emphasised the country is ‘not interested to be at war with Lebanon… but Lebanon has been hijacked by a terror organisation which is also a political party called Hezbollah’.   

‘It’s been armed to its teeth by the Iranian empire of evil.

‘We don’t want to get to war. We want to bring our citizens back to their homes on the border with Lebanon.’

Herzog also highlighted his ‘disappointment’ in the way the new UK Government has acted towards Israel, which he claims is ‘fighting for its existence’.

He said: ‘I have, personally, very close affinity with His Majesty’s Government and with Britain at large, but we also have to understand that between friends we expect friends and allies to be there for us all the time, as we are for them.

‘There is a sense of disappointment in Israel and I have expressed it to my friends.’ 

Following Herzog’s slamming of the UK government, Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Sunday called for an ‘immediate ceasefire’ after a ‘worrying escalation’ between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, as heightening cross-border tensions led to fears of an all-out war.

‘Our message to all parties is clear: we need an immediate ceasefire from both sides so that we can get to a political settlement, so that Israelis and Lebanese civilians can return to their homes and live in peace and security,’ Lammy said in a speech at the Labour party’s annual conference.

The European Union echoed Lammy’s fears and shared it is ‘extremely concerned’ about an escalation of the conflict between Israel and Lebanese militant group, and is calling for an ‘urgent’ ceasefire, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Sunday.

‘The European Union is extremely concerned about an escalation in Lebanon after the attacks Friday in Beirut,’ Borrell said in a statement, calling for a ‘ceasefire’ along the demarcation line separating them, ‘as well as in Gaza’.

The UN also weighed in on the escalating conflict, with the body’s chief Antonio Guterres warning that Lebanon could become ‘another Gaza’ if tensions rose any higher. 

Guterres told CNN, ahead of the annual gathering of world leaders in New York: ‘What concerns me [is] the possibility of transforming Lebanon [into] another Gaza.’

He added that he didn’t believe Hamas or Israel were interested in reaching a ceasefire deal. 

‘It is for me clear that both sides are not interested in a ceasefire. And that is a tragedy, because this is a war that must stop,’ Guterres said.

‘Neither the government of Israel nor the Hamas really want the ceasefire.’

Israel’s key ally, the United States, said Sunday military escalation is not in Israel’s ‘best interest’.

White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said ‘we still believe that there can be time and space for a diplomatic solution’.

The comments come after Israel and Lebanon exchanged heavy fire overnight as the IDF vowed to intensify its strikes against Hezbollah targets.

The Israeli military said it struck around 290 targets on Saturday including thousands of Hezbollah rocket launcher barrels, with the country closing down its schools and restricting gatherings in many northern areas of the country early on Sunday. 

Dozens of fighter jets started ‘extensively’ striking southern Lebanon ‘following detection of Hezbollah preparing to fire toward Israeli territory’, IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

Before the evening Israeli strikes began, the IDF said earlier it had destroyed ‘about 180 sites and thousands of [rocket] launcher barrels’ with strikes.

Sirens sounded throughout the night as multiple rockets and missiles were fired from Lebanon and Iraq, most of which were intercepted by Israeli aerial defence systems, the military said.

The Israeli army said more than 100 projectiles were fired from Lebanon early Sunday morning, adding fire services were working to put out blazes sparked by falling munitions. 

Israeli media reported that a number of buildings were hit directly or by falling missile debris, and ambulance services said they treated some lightly injured people – no serious casualties were reported.

Hezbollah said it targeted the Israeli Ramat David Airbase with dozens of missiles in response to ‘repeated Israeli attacks on Lebanon’, the group posted on its Telegram channel early on Sunday.

In an initial response to the explosions of pagers and walkie talkies on Tuesday and Wednesday, Hezbollah also ‘bombed the Rafael military industry complexes’ in northern Israel with ‘dozens’ of Katyusha, Fadi-1 and Fadi-2 rockets, the group said. 

The successive barrages of rocket attacks launched by Hezbollah at Ramat David are the deepest strikes it has claimed since hostilities began.

The air base and the Rafael site both appeared in drone footage Hezbollah released in recent months, in videos seen as a potential bank of targets for the group in case of widening conflict. 

Iran-backed Iraqi militants in a statement also claimed an explosive drone attack on Israel early on Sunday.

Following the attacks, Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said it treated four people for shrapnel wounds, including a 76-year-old man who was moderately wounded near Haifa, where buildings were damaged and cars set on fire.

It was not immediately clear if the damage was caused by a rocket or an Israeli interceptor.

The escalating attacks come less than 48 hours after an Israeli airstrike targeting Hezbollah commanders killed at least 37 people in a suburb of the Lebanese capital, according to authorities.

Hezbollah said 16 members including senior leader Ibrahim Aqil and another commander, Ahmed Wahbi, were among those killed on Friday in the deadliest strike in nearly a year of conflict with Israel.

Israel’s army said it hit an underground gathering of Aqil and leaders of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces, and had almost completely dismantled its military chain of command.

The attack levelled a multi-story residential building in the crowded suburb and damaged a nursery next door, a security source said. 

Three children and seven women were among those killed, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.

Friday’s strike sharply escalated the conflict and inflicted another blow on Hezbollah after two days of attacks in which pagers and walkie-talkies used by its members exploded.

The death toll in those attacks, widely believed to have been carried out by Israel, has risen to 39 with more than 3,000 injured. 

In what it said was the initial retaliation for the attacks with the exploding devices, Hezbollah on Sunday posted on its Telegram channel that it had launched rockets at Israeli military-industry facilities.

Israel quickly responded, striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, the military said in a statement.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he was worried about escalation but that the Israeli killing of a top Hezbollah leader brought justice to the group, which Washington designates a terrorist organisation.

‘While the risk of escalation is real, we actually believe there is also a distinct avenue to getting to a cessation of hostilities and a durable solution that makes people on both sides of the border feel secure,’ Sullivan told reporters.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati cancelled a planned trip to the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

As fears continue to rise that the conflict could break out into a full-scale war, the US State Department issued new travel advice for citizens currently in Lebanon.

The US Embassy in Beirut has urged people to ‘depart Lebanon while commercial options still remain available’, warning they were already running at ‘reduced capacity’.

The embassy added it ‘may not be able to assist US citizens who choose to remain’.