Hezbollah vows to respond to the Israeli killing of a top commander

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has vowed to give a crushing reply to an air raid by Israel that assassinated the group’s commander, Fouad Shukr, in Beirut. Citing Shukr, Tel Aviv said the recent missile attack on the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israel-occupied Golan Heights that claimed the lives of 12 individuals was by the group. But, in response to the incident, Hezbollah has distanced itself from any responsibility for the same. 

 “We are devising not a nominal and undifferentiated reaction but a real and thoughtful one,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech at Shukr’s funeral. 

 Shukr reacted to his attack and was killed shortly after that, while another Hamas political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Tehran this Wednesday, which Israel was accused of. Similarly to the case of Shukr’s death, Israel has neither admitted nor denied its role in the assassination attempt on Haniyeh. 

 Nasrallah stated that the struggle with Israel is no longer a small-scale fight but a large-scale war, which includes Gaza, southern Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran. He indicts Israel for attacking a house IN southern Beirut full of women and children, an action which led to Shukr’s death. There was also an Iranian among the victims. 

 Lebanese officials said seven people died in the attack, with two of them being children. The attack took place on Tuesday. Nasrallah stressed that this in the southern suburb of Beirut cannot be described as a reaction but rather as aggression. 

 Nasrallah thus brought a connection between the events that took place in the southern suburb of Beirut and a bigger war between the US-Israeli coalition and the region. “The murder of Shukr is the destiny we get for backing Gaza and the Palestinians,” he stated. He also declared that Khezbollah would extend its normal attacks on Israel starting Friday in addition to the response to assassinate Shukr. 

Thus, in response to the accusations made by Israel in detail of the attack on Majdal Shams, Nasrallah said that an internal investigation conducted by Hezbollah has shown that they were not guilty of such an attack. “If we had done it, even by mistake we would not have kept it a secret, we would have announced it,” he said. 

 Cross-border attacks have increased, and it lies in the element of probability that there will be another war between Israel and Hezbollah. This increase has occurred after a vigorous attack by Israel on Gaza, whereby the conflict has claimed nearly 39,500 lives since last October after the invasion by the Palestinian group known as Hamas. 

 The murder of Fouad Shukr and Ismail Haniyeh, along with the threatening speech of Nasrallah concerning massive revenge, show that modern struggle in the Middle East cannot be characterized as monochromatic and has very many rays. Thus, as each side prepares for the next military attack, the global audience anxiously waits to avoid the large-scale conflict that will envelop the region.