Hezbollah: Resistance axis resolved to liberate Palestine no matter the cost

Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem made the remarks to Iran’s Arabic-language television news network al-Alam TV in an exclusive interview on Thursday.

“The [members of the regional] resistance axis are of same and common ideas. All [parties] have been convinced across the resistance axis that Palestine serves as the compass, and that the strong should help out the weak,” he said.

“All [the members] have reached the consensus that the goal is the liberation of Palestine,” Qassem noted, adding, “We never care about the cost of supporting the issue of Palestine.”

Over the past several months, the members of the regional resistance axis have been engaged in a common drive against the occupying regime.

The push started with Operation al-Aqsa Storm by the Gaza Strip’s resistance movements, including Hamas, against the occupied territories on October 7, 2023, during which hundreds were taken captive.

Hezbollah as well as Iraqi and Yemeni resistance groups have been shoring up the drive by launching numerous operations against Israeli targets as well as American ones in protest at Washington’s all-out support for the Israeli regime.

The Hezbollah official said the goal sought by Operation al-Aqsa Storm was “to create an aperture to open up the path of liberation of Palestine.”

The operation also sought to end the Israeli regime’s siege of Gaza, stop its illegal settlement construction activities in the occupied West Bank, and save the al-Aqsa Mosque — Islam’s third holiest site — from Israeli plots, he said.

“The operation made the enemy realize that the resistance is powerful and no one possesses the capability to prevail it,” Qassem stated.

He cited the example of the Israeli regime’s failure to destroy Hamas, despite a months-long US-backed war that it has been waging against Gaza since the launch of the operation.

“Israel does not fight a war,” he said, adding, “it just engages in devastation.”

The Hezbollah official, meanwhile, asserted that each part of the regional resistance axis joined the Gaza Strip-based resistance movements’ anti-Israeli drive “based on its own idea and analysis.”

“No one issued them any orders [to do so].”