“The Israeli army today is tired and exhausted on all fronts,” claims Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon’s Shia Hezbollah movement, “the enemy’s senior experts acknowledge the strategic losses.”
In a televised address on Wednesday on the occasion of Ramadan and reported by Press TV, Nasrallah said last year’s October 7 Hamas attack on Israel was driven by Tel Aviv’s “crimes against the Palestinians”. An estimated 31,000 Palestinians have lost their lives in the Gaza war so far.
Nasrallah, whose movement is backed by Iran, says the Israelis are downplaying the intensity of resistance their troops are facing in Gaza. While Tel Aviv says it has lost 590 officers and men in the war so far, Nasrallah says “The number of its dead is very large and much greater than announced. We announce our martyrs in live broadcasts but the enemy hides its dead and this has an impact on the Israeli army.”
He rejected the Israeli claim that it was winning the war in Gaza, pointing out that “One of the signs of defeat for the enemy is that the occupation is negotiating with Hamas in the sixth month of the war. Hamas today is negotiating on behalf of the resistance and not from a position of weakness.”
The Jerusalem Post also reported Nasrallah as saying, “We affirm from our Lebanese front that we stand alongside the people of Gaza. The screams of settlers in northern occupied Palestine are getting louder as a result of Hezbollah operations.”
He had a message for Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who had vowed to destroy Hamas in Rafah, saying “Even if you act in Rafah, you have lost the war.”
Also a message for US President Biden. “With the wave of a pen he could stop the war, stop the aggression against the people of Gaza. The US administration is stupid and must stop the war.”
