Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Tuesday that Hezbollah’s intended replacement of its former leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed late last month, has also been “taken out.”
“Today, Hezbollah is weaker than it has been for many, many years,” Netanyahu said in a message tailored directly to the “people of Lebanon.”
“We’ve degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities, we took out thousands of terrorists, including [former Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah himself, and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of his replacement.”
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Netanyahu said Iran has “conquered” Lebanon to ensure Hezbollah serves Tehran’s interests in the region by turning it into a “stockpile of ammunition and weapons” serving as a pseudo “Iranian military base” on Israel’s border.
“Now you, the Lebanese people, you stand at a significant crossroads. It is your choice,” he continued. “You can now take back your country. You can return it to a path of peace and prosperity.”
“If you don’t, Hezbollah will continue to try to fight Israel from densely populated areas at your expense,” the prime minister added. “Free your country from Hezbollah.”
Netanyahu did not explicitly say what it would take to stop Israeli strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon, but earlier on Tuesday the group’s deputy leader Naim Qassem suggested he may be open to a cease-fire without the inclusion of Gaza in the negotiations.
Netanyahu’s announcement regarding the death of Hashem Safieddine, who sat as the head of Hezbollah’s executive council and was most likely slated to be the group’s next leader, comes as Israeli forces expanded their incursion westward along the border in Lebanon.
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Though Safieddine was not as well-known as Nasrallah, who served as the leader of Hezbollah for more than 30 years, his close ties to Iran and his outspoken behavior following the Hamas attacks against Israel on Oct. 7,2023 cemented him as a top target of Jerusalem’s.
It is not clear how or where Safieddine was allegedly killed, though the announcement of his death followed an update provided by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) which said “hundreds of terrorists” had been “eliminated” since the 98th Brigade first entered Lebanon last week.
The brigade, which is made up of paratroopers, commandos as well as top soldiers of the 7th Brigade and the Yahalom Unit, has been targeting and dismantling Hezbollah strongholds, weapons depots and tunnel routes used by Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Forces near the border with Israel.
The IDF has said it will carry out a “limited, localized, targeted” operation in Lebanon, but as Israeli forces continue to hit Hezbollah strongholds well north of the border including the capital city of Beirut, concerns are mounting that Lebanon could see similar destruction to that caused in Gaza, with one U.N. official referring to the strategy of bombardment as the “spiral of doom,” reported multiple outlets Tuesday.
Internally displaced people from southern Lebanon have been pouring into Beirut following Israel’s increase in strikes three weeks ago, followed by the incursion earlier this month.
Beirut mayor Abdallah Darwich urged a cease-fire to be reached between Hezbollah and Israel and told the BBC on Tuesday there was “no safe place in Beirut,” warning that the capital city had reached the “limit of its tolerance.”
“You do not know who is living in this building or that building, so you do not know if there is a target there,” he said. “You can no longer say Beirut is safe. Where the next Israeli target is, nobody knows.”
Roughly 1.2 million people have been displaced in Lebanon since the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel escalated last month. More than 400,000 people have fled Lebanon into Syria, and roughly 1,400 have been killed based on numbers provided by the Lebanese Health Ministry and the number of combatants believed to have been killed by Israel. Some 70,000 Israelis have been forced out of the country’s northern communities since the start of the conflict.
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