TEHRAN- Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem said on Tuesday that the Lebanese resistance movement has adopted "a new calculation" to inflict pain on Israel.

Israel launched a major offensive against Lebanon on September 23 with the aim of allowing evacuated Israelis to come back to the north.
Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire a day after the regime launched war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.  Hezbollah has hit Israeli military sites in solidarity with Palestinians in the besieged territory. 

Hezbollah says more than two million Israelis in the north will be under constant threat if the regime keeps the war going in Lebanon and Gaza.Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in northern Israel and southern Lebanon amid the exchanges of fire between the two sides over the course of the Gaza war which has killed about 42,300 Palestinians. 

Qassem said displaced Israelis would be able to return to northern Israel after a ceasefire deal is reached through an indirect agreement.

"The solution is a ceasefire we are not speaking from a position of weakness. If the Israelis do not want that, we will continue," he said. 

The Hezbollah deputy chief, however, said more Israelis will be displaced if the war continues.

He noted that "the number of uninhabited settlements will increase, and hundreds of thousands, even more than two million, will be in danger at any time, at any hour, on any day".

Qassem stressed that since Israel has attacked all over Lebanon, Hezbollah has the right to attack anywhere in Israel.

"We will focus on targeting the Israeli military and its centers and barracks," he pointed out. 

Elsewhere in his remark, the Hezbollah deputy secretary general warned of Israel’s global threat. 

“Israel is a usurper and an occupying regime, and a real danger to the entire region and the world… This regime does not limit its occupation to Palestine; it seeks to expand its control, as Palestine alone is insufficient for its ambitions. Israel also aims to dominate the territories of Arab and Muslim states,” he said.

Qassem also raised the alarm about US plots in the region in the wake of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.  

“America, the biggest devil, wants a new Middle East. Netanyahu shares the same vision. This means the US and Israel are deliberately carrying out this genocide,” he said. 

Israeli strikes have killed more than 2,300 people in Lebanon since October last year, mainly in the last few weeks. More than 1.2 million Lebanese have also been displaced.