With the Gaza conflict still raging in its eighth month, Iran-backed Lebanese outfit Hezbollah is reportedly preparing for a surprise attack on Israel. The group’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah has warned Israel to be ready for surprises in a televised speech.

“You must expect surprises from our resistance,” he said on Friday, which marks the 24th anniversary of Resistance and Liberation Day.

Hezbollah, which emerged as a strong force during the Lebanon civil war, had been engaged in fighting Israel in a show of support for the Palestinian cause and Gaza.

Israel has been conducting a military offensive in Gaza since the October 7 attack by the Palestinian Hamas group left over a thousand dead in bordering Israeli towns.

But Israel’s own leaders have admitted they did not achieve any of its goals in the Gaza war, asserted Nasrallah. He was referring to Israeli National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi’s admission that they have not achieved any of the strategic goals and it may take years.

Nasrallah also listed the setbacks for Israel, which is backed by the West.

“The recognition of the Palestinian state by a number of European countries is a great loss for the occupation,” Middle East Monitor cited him as saying.

This recognition, he said, was one of the results of the “Al-Aqsa Flood battle”, the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

“One of the results of the Al-Aqsa Flood and the steadfastness of the resistance is that today Israel is appearing before the ICC (International Criminal Court),” he said.

Nasrallah accused Israel of not respecting international resolutions and launching violent raids on Rafah despite the International Court of Justice (ICJ) order to immediately halt its military offensive.

Hanegbi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top aide, had said after the ICJ ruling that his country has the right to defend itself.

People inspect the rubble of a house where a Hezbollah member and his family were killed in Israeli bombardment.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said on March 12 it launched more than 100 rockets at Israeli military positions in retaliation for a strike on the country’s east that killed one person the day before.

Hamas ally Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged near-daily cross-border fire since the Gaza war erupted in October, but several Israeli strikes have recently hit Hezbollah positions further north, raising fears of a full-blown conflict.

“Hezbollah launched “more than a hundred katyusha rockets” on Tuesday morning at two military bases in the occupied Golan Heights,” the group said in a statement. This was “in response to the Israeli attacks on our people, villages and cities, most recently near the city of Baalbek and the killing of a citizen”, it added.

On Monday, Israeli air strikes near Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek killed one person, in the second raid on the Hezbollah stronghold since cross-border hostilities began. The Israeli military confirmed its jets had hit two sites belonging to “Hezbollah’s aerial forces” in retaliation for strikes on the occupied Golan Heights over several days.

On February 26, Israeli strikes targeted Baalbek, some 100 km (60 miles) from the border, killing two Hezbollah members. Earlier on Tuesday, Hezbollah said its chief Hassan Nasrallah met with Khalil al-Hayya, a leading member of Hamas’s political bureau.

They discussed ceasefire talks for the Gaza war, as well as attacks by Hamas’s regional allies to support its war efforts, the Hezbollah statement said. Nasrallah is due to give a televised speech on Wednesday. Hezbollah has repeatedly said it will only stop its attacks on Israel with a ceasefire in Gaza.

But Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant recently said any truce in Gaza would not change Israel’s goal of pushing Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, by force or diplomacy.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, at least 317 people, mainly Hezbollah fighters but also 54 civilians, have been killed in Lebanon, according to an AFP tally. In Israel, at least 10 soldiers and seven civilians have been killed in the cross-border hostilities.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah meets Jihad Secretary General Ziyad al-Nakhalah and deputy leader of Hamas, Sheikh Saleh al-Arouri at an unidentified location in this handout image released on October 25, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

“Senior officials of Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have held talks with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah about achieving “real victory” in their war with Israel,” the Lebanese group said on October 25.

The Hezbollah statement did not specify when or where Nasrallah met with Hamas number two Saleh al-Aruri and Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhaleh beyong saying that it was at a undisclosed location in Lebanon.

News of the meeting comes as Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions exchange daily fire with the Israeli Army across the Lebanon-Israel border, raising fears of a new front in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

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The three groups are part of the “axis of resistance” — Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian and other Iran-backed armed groups opposed to Israel.

They discussed what “the axis of resistance must do at this critical stage to achieve real victory… in Gaza and Palestine and stop” Israel’s “brutal aggression”, the statement said.

They also discussed “recent events in the Gaza Strip since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” — the unprecedented October 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in Israel.

The Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza says 5,791 people have been killed, again mostly civilians, as Israel has bombarded the territory. Hassan Nasrallah and the Palestinian militant leaders “agreed to keep coordinating and daily following up on developments,” the statement added.

Hezbollah and Hamas have long been part of a “joint operations room” with the Quds Force — the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards — a source close to Hezbollah previously told AFP on condition of anonymity.

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“The meeting also touched upon the cross-border fire on the Lebanon-Israel border,” the statement said.

At least 52 people have been killed in Lebanon according to an AFP tally, mostly Hezbollah combatants but also four civilians, including Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah. Four people have been killed in Israel, including one civilian.