V“We have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it sinks into the abyss of a long war that will cause destruction and suffering like that we see in Gaza,” Netanyahu said in an English-language video at the attention of the Lebanese.
“I say to you, Lebanese: free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end,” he added in reference to the Lebanese Islamist movement against which Israel launched a ground offensive on September 30 in the southern Lebanon after a campaign of air strikes and bombardments during the second half of September.
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“We have eliminated thousands of terrorists including [Hassan] Nasrallah [chef du Hezbollah tué le 27 septembre dans une frappe israélienne dans la banlieue sud de Beyrouth, NDLR] and Nasrallah’s replacement and his replacement’s replacement,” Mr. Netanyahu also said in this video message without providing names.
On Saturday, a Hezbollah official told AFP that contact with Hachem Safieddine, expected to succeed Hassan Nasrallah at the head of Hezbollah, had been “lost” since Israeli strikes near Beirut the day before.
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Hezbollah opened a front against Israel on October 8, the day after Hamas’s bloody and unprecedented attack on Israeli territory that triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, devastated by a year of Israeli military reprisals against the movement. Palestinian Islamist and in the grip of an acute humanitarian crisis.
The almost daily cross-border clashes between the Israeli army and Hezbollah have caused the displacement of tens of thousands of people on both sides of the demarcation line between Lebanon and Israel.
In September, the Israeli government made the safe return of residents of the north of the country one of Israel’s war goals before clearly going on the offensive against Hezbollah.
“Israel has the right to defend itself. Israel also has the right to win. And Israel will win,” assured Mr. Netanyahu.
