(Al Jazeera Media Network) Hezbollah’s leader Naim Qassem says the group has the right to respond to Israel’s assassination of its top military chief in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs last week.
In a televised speech on Friday, Qassem called the killing of Haytham Ali Tabtabai “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime”, adding that the Lebanese armed group has “the right to respond, and we will determine the timing for that.”
“Do you expect a war later? It’s possible, sometime. Yes, this possibility is there, and the possibility of no war is also there,” Qassem said.
Qassem did not explicitly say what the group’s role would be in any new war, but said Lebanon should prepare a plan to confront Israel that relies on “its army and its people”.
The Hezbollah leader also said he hoped Pope Leo’s upcoming visit to Lebanon “will play a role in bringing about peace and ending the [Israeli] aggression.”
Qassem insisted that Hezbollah has respected the November 2024 ceasefire that sought to end over a year of fighting with Israel, and demanded an end to continuing Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Tabtabai was in a meeting with four of his aides “to prepare for future actions” when he was struck, Qassem said.
Responding to Qassem’s speech, Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said the Lebanese army’s efforts to seize Hezbollah weapons in the country’s south were “inadequate”.
“Hezbollah continues to manipulate them and work covertly to maintain its arsenal,” Adraee said in a post on X.
But Hezbollah has said it is unwilling to let go of its arms as long as Israel continues to launch attacks on Lebanese territory and station its forces at five locations across southern Lebanon.
Israel has been carrying out near-daily strikes on southern Lebanon and has attacked Beirut several times. But prior to last week’s assassination, the capital had not been hit for months.
In a separate attack last week, at least 13 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health.
