In his first address as Hezbollah’s new Secretary General, Naim Qassem said on Wednesday that he will follow in the footsteps of his slain predecessor Hassan Nasrallah by pursuing the same policy of supporting Gaza through the south Lebanon front.
“My program (as new secretary general) will be a perpetuation of Nasrallah’s work in all fields. We will continue to implement the war plan, and we will remain on the same path and deal with the developments at this stage,” Qassem said.
He stressed that “supporting Gaza was a duty to counter the Israeli threat,” and that Hezbollah’s so-called resistance is aimed at confronting Israel’s occupation and its expansionist intentions.
He, however, added that Hezbollah does not want war, but is “ready for it.”
“If the Israelis decide to cease fire, we will accept, but on the conditions that we deem appropriate and favorable, but we will not beg for a ceasefire,” Qassem said, adding that in the meantime “we will continue in the war for days, weeks and months.”
As his predecessor, Qassem sought to justify the ongoing war with Israel that has wreaked havoc and destruction in south Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburb, claimed the lives of more than 2400 people and displaced some 1.4 million.
In further justification of the unabating conflict that Hezbollah initiated by opening its so-called “support front” for Gaza, Qassem said Israel did not need an excuse to attack Lebanon claiming that “it wanted to start a war with Lebanon” immediately after the Gaza war broke out on October 7, 2023.
Refuting accusations that Hezbollah is a military tool in the hands of Tehran, the group’s new chief claimed: “We are not fighting on behalf of anyone or for anyone's agenda; instead, we are fighting for our own project, which is to protect and liberate Lebanon. Iran supports us in this endeavor without asking for anything in return”
In brief, Qassem reiterated the same rhetoric he used in three previous addresses that he made following Nasrallah’s assassination in a massive Israeli raid on Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 27.
The main aim of these addresses is to lift up the morale of Hezbollah’s followers, after the killing of most of the party’s leadership and the pager and walkie-talkie explosions that injured more than 4,000 of its members and affiliates.
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