{"id":289838,"date":"2024-06-21T06:14:59","date_gmt":"2024-06-21T06:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=289838"},"modified":"2024-06-22T05:39:18","modified_gmt":"2024-06-22T05:39:18","slug":"hezbollah-leader-cyprus-will-be-target-if-it-lets-israel-use-its-territory-in-conflict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=289838","title":{"rendered":"Hezbollah leader: Cyprus will be target if it lets Israel use its territory in conflict"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peter Beaumont and Helena Smith \u2013 The Guardian June 19, 2024<\/strong><\/h1>\n

The leader of Hezbollah<\/a>, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, warned of a war \u201cwithout rules or ceilings\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Cyprus and Israel have a bilateral defence cooperation agreement which has seen the countries conduct joint exercises.<\/p>\n

\u201cOpening Cypriot airports and bases to the Israeli enemy to target Lebanon<\/a> would mean that the Cypriot government is part of the war, and the resistance will deal with it as part of the war,\u201d the Hezbollah chief said.<\/p>\n

Nikos Christodoulides, the island\u2019s president, responded on Wednesday evening: \u201cCyprus remains uninvolved in any military conflicts and positions itself as part of the solution rather the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sought to emphasise the humanitarian role the EU\u2019s easternmost state had played in the Middle East, facilitating the opening of a sea corridor to transport desperately needed aid to Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur humanitarian corridor is a testament to our commitment to peace and stability,\u201d he told reporters at a University of Cyprus graduation ceremony.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cSuch statements are not pleasant, but they do not reflect reality. Cyprus is not participating in any military engagements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christodoulides said the threat would be raised through diplomatic channels.<\/p>\n

Nasrallah\u2019s remarks came a day after Israeli generals said they had signed off on planning for a wider offensive against Hezbollah<\/a>, and Israel\u2019s foreign minister, Israel Katz, suggested the country was on the brink of deciding whether to expand the war.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a memorial for Taleb Sami Abdallah, the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed by Israel<\/a> since the two sides began cross border exchanges on 8 October, Nasrallah insisted that Hezbollah\u2019s role was to support Hamas fighting in Gaza and that it had succeeded in tying up Israeli forces in the country\u2019s north.<\/p>\n

Nasrallah spoke about a strategy of a limited conflict with Israel<\/a>, 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\u2019s attacks.<\/p>\n

Nasrallah\u2019s televised speech underlined the difficulty of diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the conflict between the two sides as it has edged into ever more dangerous territory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have more than 100,000 fighters, and even more, even in the worst-case scenario. We have prepared for the worst-case scenario and Israel knows it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Describing Hezbollah\u2019s intelligence-gathering, which was dramatised by the broadcast of drone surveillance footage of Haifa on Tuesday, Nasrallah said: \u201cSince 8 October, the enemy has understood that certain places would be targeted,\u201d adding that the militia had hours of surveillance footage of Haifa.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt knows we have information about these locations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2006 [during the second Lebanese war], we had the ambition to bomb the Israeli base on Mount Meron. Today we just tell the fighters to do it, and they do it immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever our intentions,\u201d he continued, \u201cwhether we want all-out war or not, the enemy is obliged to remain ready in the north of the country,\u201d adding that Israeli threats had \u201cno impact\u201d on Hezbollah\u2019s calculations.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, before Nasrallah\u2019s speech, Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon killed three Hezbollah fighters, the militant group said, as a US envoy tasked with avoiding a devastating regional war returned to Israel after meeting officials in Lebanon.<\/p>\n

One Israeli airstrike landed near the southern coastal Lebanese city of Tyre, 20 miles from the frontier, which is sheltering many Lebanese people displaced from the immediate border area.<\/p>\n

On the Israeli side of the Blue Line, which divides Israel and Lebanon, Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at an army base near the town of Kiryat Shmona on Wednesday afternoon, starting several fires.<\/p>\n

Fears of a wider war between Israel and Hezbollah have intensified since Israel\u2019s killing last week of Abdallah, to which Hezbollah responded by launching hundreds of munitions, including drones and rockets, against Israel in the heaviest barrage of the latest conflict.<\/p>\n

Hopes that the violence may subsiding, at least temporarily, were shattered by Hezbollah\u2019s release of surveillance drone footage that was filmed over the city of Haifa, prompting threats of \u201call-out war\u201d from Israel\u2019s foreign minister and the announcement that IDF generals had signed off on plans for a Lebanon offensive.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, satellite images and data collected by regional officials in southern Lebanon suggest widespread and growing devastation from the conflict which has seen 1,700 houses completely destroyed and 14,000 suffering partial damage.<\/p>\n

Nasrallah spoke as Amos Hochstein, a senior adviser to the US president, Joe Biden, was back in Israel after meetings in Lebanon on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

There was no indication of any progress in his efforts to defuse the conflict amid warnings that an escalation to full-scale war could lead to a regional conflict.<\/p>\n

With the Israeli offensive in Gaza now in its ninth month, international criticism has grown steadily over the US\u2019s support for Israel\u2019s air and ground attacks.<\/p>\n

The top UN court has concluded there is a \u201cplausible risk of genocide\u201d in Gaza<\/a> \u2013 a charge Israel strongly denies. Israel blames civilian deaths on Hamas, saying militants operate among the population.<\/p>\n

Israeli airstrikes and clashes between troops and Palestinian militants rocked Gaza on Wednesday, after the IDF\u2019s warning it had readied an \u201coffensive\u201d against Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

Witnesses and the civil defence agency in the Gaza Strip reported Israeli bombardment in western Rafah, where medics said drone strikes and shelling killed at least seven people.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nasrallah warns of a war \u201cwithout rules or ceilings\u201d if Israel launches a full-scale offensive against Hezbollah<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":275283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=289838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289839,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289838\/revisions\/289839"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/275283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=289838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=289838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=289838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}