TEHRAN- Since launching a brutal military campaign in Lebanon last month, Israel has concurrently carried out psychological warfare operations in a desperate attempt to tarnish the image of the Hezbollah resistance movement.

Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war on Gaza on October 7, 2023. Netanyahu issued the order after Hamas conducted Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, a surprise military attack in southern Israel which dealt a severe blow to the regime.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in northern Israel and southern Lebanon amid the exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the course of the Gaza war which has so far left more than 42,000 Palestinian people dead. 

Israel launched a massive bombing campaign in Lebanon on September 23 which was later followed by a ground invasion of the country’s south. Israel also assassinated Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on a neighborhood in southern Beirut on September 27.

Hezbollah has stressed that it will not stop fighting until Israel ends its aggression against Lebanon and Gaza. Israel said the offensive was aimed at removing Hezbollah from the border area and allowing evacuated Israelis to return to northern Israel. 

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, more than 2,100 people have been killed as a result of Israel’s acts of aggression against the Mediterranean nation since October last year. 

In addition to massacring Lebanese people, Israel has waged propaganda against Hezbollah. The Netanyahu regime has tried to convey the impression that the offensive has forced Hezbollah to acquiesce to its demands. 

But Hezbollah has not only escalated its missile attacks on Israel by targeting sensitive military sites but it has also inflicted significant damage on the regime's ground forces on the battlefield in southern Lebanon.

On Friday, Hezbollah issued a statement stressing that it will not stop fighting until Israel ends its aggression against Lebanon and Gaza. 

“The Islamic Resistance is committed to its covenant and promise to its supreme and most holy martyr, His Eminence the Secretary-General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah (may his holy secret be sanctified), that the settlements in northern occupied Palestine will remain free of settlers until the war on Gaza and Lebanon stops,” the statement said. It is a reference to Israel’s failed attempts to return settlers to northern Israel. 

The statement also warned Israelis to stay away from military bases in cities such as Haifa.

Hezbollah has warned Israelis to stay away from military bases in cities such as Haifa, Tiberias and Acre.“The Israeli enemy army uses the homes of settlers in some settlements in north of occupied Palestine as gathering positions for its officers and soldiers, and its military bases that manage the aggression against Lebanon are also located inside settlement neighborhoods in major occupied cities such as Haifa, Tiberias, Acre, and others.”

It added, “These homes and military bases are targets for the missile and air force of the Islamic Resistance, and accordingly we warn the settlers against being present near those military gatherings in order to preserve their lives until further notice.” 

Israel’s air and ground attacks against Lebanon are in line with its attempts to cover up military setbacks on the Gaza battlefield. 

Since the start of the Gaza onslaught, Netanyahu has vowed to eliminate Hamas. But it has failed to achieve this goal. 

To divert attention away from such military setbacks and its genocidal war on Gaza, Israel invaded Lebanon. 

But the Israeli army’s inability to make progress in the ground operations in southern Lebanon suggests a recurrence of the big and costly mistakes it has made during the Gaza conflict.

Israel is sinking deeper into the quagmire of the Gaza war more than a year after attacking the Palestinian territory. 

The regime is now in a new quagmire. But this time, resistance forces will give a painful lesson to the Israeli occupiers which could hasten the collapse of the apartheid entity.