BEIRUT – The chief of Lebanon’s Hezbollah staff held talks on Wednesday with senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad figures in a key assembly of 3 top anti-Israel militant groups amid the war raging in Gaza.
A temporary remark following the assembly stated that Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah agreed with Hamas’ Saleh al-Arouri and Islamic Jihad’s chief Ziad al-Nakhleh at the subsequent steps that the 3 — alongside with different Iran-backed militants — will have to take at this “sensitive stage.”
Their goal, according to the statement that was carried on Hezbollah-run and Lebanese state media, was to achieve “a real victory for the resistance in Gaza and Palestine” and halt Israel’s “treacherous and brutal aggression towards our oppressed and steadfast folks in Gaza and the West Bank”.
No different main points had been equipped. The discussions in Beirut got here because the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant staff that laws the Gaza Strip, is now in its 3rd week. The preventing, induced by way of Hamas’ deadly incursion into Israel on Oct. 7 that killed greater than 1,400 folks in Israel, has killed greater than 5,700 Palestinians in Gaza.
As the Gaza loss of life toll spirals, tensions have also been rising along the tense Lebanon-Israel border, the place Hezbollah contributors were exchanging hearth with Israeli troops because the day after Hamas’ rampage into Israel.
For now, the ones exchanges stay restricted to a handful of border cities and Hezbollah and Israeli army positions on each side. Lebanese military squaddies and United Nations peacekeeping forces have deployed in huge numbers.
Dozens of Hezbollah combatants were killed within the clashes to this point, the gang says, whilst the Israeli army has additionally introduced some deaths amongst its ranks.
Nasrallah has but to publicly discuss in regards to the conflict in Gaza and clashes alongside the Lebanon-Israel border. However, different Hezbollah most sensible officers have warned Israel towards its deliberate floor invasion into the besieged territory.
Israeli officers have stated they might retaliate aggressively in case of a cross-border assault by way of Hezbollah from Lebanon.
“We will cripple it with a pressure it can not even consider, and the results for it and the Lebanese state (will likely be) devastating,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said while visiting Israeli troops along the border with Lebanon on Sunday.
Lebanon’s cash-strapped caretaker government, along regional and international figures, has been scrambling to keep the country out of the war.
Hezbollah and Israel fought a monthlong conflict in 2006 that resulted in a traumatic stalemate. Israel sees Iran-backed Hezbollah as its maximum critical risk, estimating it has some 150,000 rockets and missiles geared toward Israel.
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