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On January 3, 2023, the Secretary General of Lebanese Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah, made a televised speech in which he vowed to avenge the killing of Saleh Al-Arouri, the deputy chief of Hamas's Political Bureau. Al-Arouri had been killed the day before in an allegedly Israeli drone attack that targeted his office in Hizbullah’s stronghold in a southern suburb of Beirut, Al-Dahia.[1]
The speech had been scheduled before the killing of Al-Arouri to mark the death of IRGC General Qassim Soleimani and Deputy Commander of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, who were both killed in the 2020 U.S. airstrike near Baghdad International Airport.
Nasrallah said that the attack on Al-Arouri was a "dangerous crime that will not remain without response or punishment, and time will tell."
He went on to explain that he received messages from parties he did not name, claiming that they tried to discourage Hizbullah from retaliating for the killing of Al-Arouri:
"Yesterday, messages came after the assassination saying that Lebanon was not the target, and Hizbullah has nothing to do with what happened, and that it was meant to settle matters with Hamas. This kind of talk would only deceive children and cowards."
Discussing Hizbullah's military operations in support of Hamas against Israel, Nasrallah said:
"Until now, we have been fighting on the front with precise calculations, and for this reason we are paying a price with the lives of our youth. But if the enemy thinks of waging a war against Lebanon, our fighting will be without ceilings, without rules, without borders, and without regulations."
Concluding, he warned that any Israeli escalation against Lebanon would trigger a full response from Hizbullah, which would not hesitate to pursue the path of war, all the way to the end.
[1] Youtube, last accessed January 3, 2024.
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