A residential area of Gaza City devastated by Israeli bombardment. Photo: Palestine Chronicle.
By Fra Hughes – Nov 5, 2023
The long-anticipated speech by Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese social, political, and resistance group Hezbollah has given us an insight into what reaction we might expect from them in the coming weeks and months as Israel continues its murderous assault on Gaza.
Hezbollah is an organisation that exists to protect the people of Lebanon from the repeated invasions carried out on their lands by Israel and is a national liberation army determined to liberate the Sheba Farms which Israel illegally occupies.
Under international law, Hezbollah has the right to use all means necessary to end this illegal occupation.
In fact, all the national liberation movements in the region exist as a direct result of the establishment of a foreign alien group of European colonial settlers, who usurped their land through violence, massacres, and expulsions.
Hezbollah exists, Hamas exists, the Popular mobilisation units in Iraq exist, the Ansarallah movement in Yemen exists, and the resistance groups in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan heights exist as a direct result of Israeli and US occupation of and interference in their lands.
Many thought Nasrallah might declare war on Israel in his November 3 speech, which I encourage everyone to watch and listen to. He outlined Hezbollah’s ongoing response to events in the Palestine.
Firstly, he reminded the world that the Palestinian military operation Al-Aqsa Flood was conceived and implemented by the unified Palestinian resistance as a standalone operation.
He went on to outline how the resistance groups in the region act in the interests of their separate national concerns and not in coordination, but support each other in their strategic objectives.
Iran stands accused by the West of directing every action carried out by the various resistance factions but Nasrallah said that is untrue. Iran supports the Axis of Resistance in the region of which it is a member, but only in a contributory manner.
Hezbollah’s actions taken against the Israeli military occupation in the Sheba Farms are primarily designed to draw hundreds of thousands of Zionist military personnel away from the onslaught on Gaza and the West Bank.
As much as 30% of all Israeli military aircraft, army, special forces, and navy are facing Lebanon and not Gaza.
This is how sections of the Axis of Resistance are helping the besieged people of Palestine.
He stated unequivocably that Hezbollah has no fear of the US naval battle groups currently stationed off the Lebanese coast, and warned Israel that “all options are on the table.”
There was an implication that any attacks on Lebanese civilians may be mirrored by the resistance groups in Lebanon.
There are credible reports that both Amal and the Communist party of Lebanon may be reforming armed groups to defend the nation and the wider region.
Blinken is travelling around West Asia in an attempt to obtain governmental actors to support US and Israeli strategic objectives on the war on Gaza.
While he talks publicly about a humanitarian pause and a limitation of civilian casualties, he refuses to call for a ceasefire.
He is trying to get Jordan and Egypt to absorb the Palestinian population into their countries in support of Israel’s dream of expelling all the Palestinians from their ancestral lands and occupy all of Palestine unopposed.
Blinken’s goal is to prevent a wider conflict, thus allowing Israel unfettered time and space to destroy Gaza, while exploring all options to have the Palestinian people relocated as refugees once again, forced to leave their homes, many for a third time after 1948, 1967, and now 2023.
The US offered to wipe out Egypt’s international debts if they accept 2.2 million Gazans into the Sinai.
Iraq’s largest geographical governate which is apparently run by pro-Western politicians has also been touted as a possible relocation centre.
If Palestinians in Gaza flee for their lives in a third wave of ethnic cleansing at the hands of Zionist terrorists, they will never be allowed to return.
A tent city, poor sanitation, no education, no employment, no healthcare, no life: that is the fate that might lie before them.
Daily life with hope, security, safety and a future which we take for granted is but a dream for the oppressed people of Palestine, and that was before this current round of slaughter.
Hamas is a legitimate national liberation army.
The events of October 7, 2023 are a direct result of the Zionist occupation of Palestine for over 100 years.
Long before its self-declared existence in 1948, Zionists were involved in emigration to Palestine, changing the demographics and using violence against the indigenous people.
Hamas, the PLO, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad and many others exist as national anti-colonial liberation movements.
Anyone who has lived or lives under colonial occupation must support these liberation movements around the globe.
The whole Axis of Resistance in West Asia is justified in its strategic and political aims; it are a reaction, a response, a result of oppression and occupation.
Israel, born by spilling the blood of Palestinians, built on the broken bones, broken homes, broken hearts, and broken dreams of a people who were disarmed by the British prior to the Zionist pusch continues to exist only with the financial and military support of the US and the European Union.
It exists as a Western colonial proxy state used to divide Arab from Persian and Muslim from Jew.
Israel is a cancer in the body politic of West Asia, and like all cancers, if untreated, it will kill the host.
Do not be under any illusion. Israel was defeated on October 7.
The US response in immediately dispatching warships and rearming the apartheid rogue regime is testament to that.
Israel has not the military capacity to occupy Gaza without US support and without the US threat to other regional actors to stand aside or face a violent attack from their naval and aerial task force.
Netanyahu is not directing the war. Israel does not want this war, it is the US which wants to reassert its influence over the region through this proxy war being waged in the interests of US foreign policy and not in the interests of Israelis or Palestinians.
While Blinken espouses sound bites for the digestion of the Western audience, Netanyahu says ‘no’ to a ceasefire until the job is done; we are simply watching the old good cop, bad cop, one two shuffle.
The US, by simply telling the Israeli junta to stop, would end the aggression in a minute. The fact that it refuses to do this should answer any questions you might have about who is behind the carpet bombing of Gaza and why.
The call by some politicians in Ireland to expel the Israeli ambassador until there is a ceasefire in place, in my opinion is a populist cynical sop to appease their support base, akin to allowing a child abuser to return to the family home once the abuse stops, and we all know how that turns out.
Fra Hughes
Fra Hughes is an Irish political activist, commentator, and author. His most recent books are My Walk with Palestine: an Activist's Taleand Voices from Donbass.
