Hezbollah chief Nasrallah says Israel should be ‘scared’ of all-out war.

The leader of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, warned of a war “without rules or ceilings” in the event of a full-scale Israeli offensive against the Lebanese militia, as he threatened that Cyprus could become a target if it allowed Israel to use its territory in any conflict.

Cyprus and Israel have a bilateral defence cooperation agreement which has seen the countries conduct joint exercises.

“Opening Cypriot airports and bases to the Israeli enemy to target Lebanon would mean that the Cypriot government is part of the war, and the resistance will deal with it as part of the war,” the Hezbollah chief said.

Nikos Christodoulides, the island’s president, responded on Wednesday evening: “Cyprus remains uninvolved in any military conflicts and positions itself as part of the solution rather the problem.”

[…]

Nasrallah’s remarks came a day after Israeli generals said they had signed off on planning for a wider offensive against Hezbollah, and Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, suggested the country was on the brink of deciding whether to expand the war.

Speaking at a memorial for Taleb Sami Abdallah, the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed by Israel since the two sides began cross border exchanges on 8 October, Nasrallah insisted that Hezbollah’s role was to support Hamas fighting in Gaza and that it had succeeded in tying up Israeli forces in the country’s north.

Nasrallah spoke about a strategy of a limited conflict with Israel, short of all-out war and aimed at a ceasefire in Gaza, but the rhetoric appeared more heated as he said that nowhere in Israel would be safe from Hezbollah’s attacks.

Source: The Guardian

Background image courtesy of Islamic World News, modified by me.