Hezbollah’s acting leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said Tuesday more Israelis will be displaced as the group expands its rocket fire deeper into Israel.
In a defiant televised statement on Tuesday, Qassem said Hezbollah's capabilities are still intact despite weeks of heavy Israeli airstrikes and that it has replaced slain commanders.
Qassem said that the Iran-backed group's fighters were pushing back Israeli ground incursions, despite the "painful blows" inflicted by Israel in recent weeks.
“We are firing hundreds of rockets and dozens of drones. A large number of settlements and cities are under the fire of the resistance,” Qassem said. “Our capabilities are fine and our fighters are deployed along the frontlines."
He said Hezbollah's top leadership was directing the war and that the commanders slain by Israel have been replaced, saying “we have no vacant posts.”
He said that Hezbollah will name a new leader to succeed Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in an underground base in Beirut’s southern suburbs last month, “but the circumstances are difficult because of the war.”
Qassem added that the group supported the efforts of Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to secure a ceasefire, without providing further details on any conditions demanded by Hezbollah.
"We support the political activity being led by Berri under the title of a ceasefire," Qassem said in the 30-minute televised address.
"In any case, after the issue of a ceasefire takes shape, and once diplomacy can achieve it, all of the other details can be discussed and decisions can be taken," he said. "If the enemy (Israel) continues its war, then the battlefield will decide."
Qassem also said the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel was a war about who cries first, and that Hezbollah would not cry first.
