Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
Hezbollah has announced the death of the General Secretary of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah almost 24 hours after the September 27 massive Israeli attack on the Hreik neighborhood in south Beirut which resulted in the assassination of Nasrallah and others.
Israel used several missiles to level six high-rise residential buildings, and then delivered a 2,000-pound 'bunker-buster' payload, aiming for the Hezbollah headquarters underneath the buildings.
Beirut will never be the same after Israel gave the signal to drop the bomb which has ignited the spark to set the region on fire and may take years to put out.
Fawaz A. Gerges, Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) recently, "I pray for Lebanon tonight. The killing of hundreds a day is not normal nor should it ever be. What Israel is doing, armed and funded by the United States, will not bring long-term security to Israel. It is brutal and senseless and risks wider conflict and bloodshed. Enough."
Hours after the attack, but before the announcement of Nasrallah's death, Gerges was interviewed by CNN, where he warned the attack on Nasrallah could trigger all-out war.
According to Firas Abiad, Health Minister of Lebanon, 11 people were killed and 108 injured in Israeli strikes yesterday. More than 700 people have been killed by the Israeli bombing campaign across Lebanon since Monday.
Iraq's Prime Minister, Shia al-Sudani, has announced three days of mourning after the death of Nasrallah, who he described as "a martyr on the path of the righteous".
Al-Sudani called the Israeli bombardment of southern Beirut and assassination on Friday a "shameful attack" and "a crime that shows the Zionist entity has crossed all the red lines".
Jean-Luc Melenchon, a French politician and former Member of the European Parliament, wrote on X (formerly Twitter), "Appalled by the scale of the ongoing massacre in Lebanon. Netanyahu is violating the sovereignty of states throughout the region with the complicity of Europe and the USA. The genocide in Gaza is spreading without limits."
Hezbollah is a Lebanese resistance group and a political party. The resistance movement aims to resist the Israeli occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria. The over-arching goal is to end the occupation. The International Court of Justice has judged the Israeli occupation of Palestine to be illegal under international law.
The resistance is demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Until then, Hezbollah has vowed to keep attacking Israel with missiles that are aimed at Israeli military targets.
However, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has decided to thwart all efforts by US President Joe Biden, or others, to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, which would end the threat from Hezbollah in the north as well.
Instead, Netanyahu and his ultra-extremist coalition partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, have decided to occupy Gaza, a crackdown on the West Bank, and start a full-fledged war in Lebanon. Peace efforts fall on deaf ears in Tel Aviv.
Recently, the Biden administration proposed a ceasefire in Lebanon, and Netanyahu rejected it before he even acknowledged its existence.
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