After speaking twice within a week, Hassan Nasrallah promised last night in his speech on the occasion of Hezbollah's Martyrs' Day, that from now on he would skimp on his speech and let the field, that is, developments on the ground, speak. Ostensibly, it can be understood from this that the front it opened against Israel in southern Lebanon will escalate as Hamas' situation in the Gaza Strip worsens.
In practice, he also confirmed that last week there was an escalation in Hezbollah's military activity: three drones attacked IDF posts, Burqan missiles that "can carry a warhead weighing up to half a ton," and Katyusha rockets fired at Kiryat Shmona.
Defense Minister Galant: "If Nasrallah makes a mistake, he will decide Lebanon's fate" Photo: Elad Malka
But with this it is also worth paying attention to what was absent from last night's speech. The threat to launch an all-out war to prevent the defeat of Hamas, mentioned in the previous speech, did not appear this time. The warning that "all options are on the table" was also not repeated. The furthest he went was to say that if the U.S. wanted to thwart the possibility of a regional war, it had better create a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
A reading between the lines reveals that Nasrallah, as of this moment, sees himself as part of an array of Iranian proxies, whose main task is to wear down Israel in order to support the "resistance" in Gaza. Nothing more.
He praised the firing of missiles and drones from Yemen and Syria at Eilat, which forces Israel to confine forces and resources to other arenas as well, and said, among other things, that he decided to "scramble" the Iron Dome and the Patriot missile system by introducing unmanned aerial vehicles for observation purposes, "some of which return and some of which fall."
Gantz in response to Israel Hayom's question: "Nasrallah understands what will happen to Lebanon if he does things he should not do" // Yehuda Schlesinger
You could tell he was counting mostly on time. As time passes, he hopes, pressure will increase on Israel to stop the attacks on Gaza, both from the United States, which "remains isolated," from Western countries, which have to deal with large demonstrations against Israel, and from the families of abductees in Gaza.
While Nasrallah was speaking from the bunker, a joint emergency summit of Arab and Islamic leaders convened in Riyadh to discuss the situation in Gaza. The gravity of the situation led to a polite handshake between Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who arrived in Saudi Arabia for the first time after more than seven years of rift between the two countries.
And not a word about Hamas' crimes
As one might expect, almost all the leaders competed over who would condemn more of Israel's "crimes" in Gaza without mentioning Hamas and, of course, without resorting to the massacre on 7 October. Among the harsh critics were Turkish President Erdogan, an avowed Hamas supporter who demanded an investigation into Israel's nuclear weapons, and the Syrian president, who made a comeback to the Arab League after 12 years of suspension because of the hundreds of thousands he massacred his own people during the Arab Spring.
Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, also lashed out at Israel. Before landing in Riyadh, he was warned by the Egyptians not to publicly repeat his agreement to administer the Gaza Strip the day after Hamas. For this reason, he made do with expressing willingness to hold general elections in the territories, which he has so far refused to do out of fear that Hamas would take all the money.
Lashed out at Israel. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, photo: AP
But the outcome of the summit in Riyadh cannot be measured solely by the content of the fiery speeches. A number of moderate Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, including some signatories to the Abraham Accords, strongly opposed including in the concluding statement a call to sever relations with Israel and end all trade relations with it. Cairo, Amman, Riyadh and the Gulf regret the deaths of innocent people in the Gaza Strip, but will not shed a tear over the elimination of the murderous terrorist organization linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Strange as it may be, what these countries, and Nasrallah on the other side, have in common is the understanding that support for Hamas must also set a limit.
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