Hezbollah’s secretary general hails the Lebanese resistance movement’s fighters over their stellar performance in the face of months-long deadly Israeli escalation.

“The sacrifices that were made in the face of the enemy’s violations were very great [in number],” Sheikh Naim Qassem said on Friday in his first televised speech following the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel.

“You exercised patience and Jihad. Your sons fought off the enemy in the valleys so they can crush the enemy. We thank God that this patience bore fruit,” he added, addressing the Lebanese people.

The comments followed thousands of retaliatory operations by Hezbollah against Israeli targets, which forced the regime to enter a ceasefire agreement with Lebanon.

This occurred approximately 13 months after Israel intensified its aggression, claiming the lives of at least 3,961 people.

Sheikh Qassem referred to the regime ramping up the deadly aggression even further over the past 63 days with the aim of “destroying” Hezbollah and stopping its strikes that had driven hundreds of thousands of illegal settlers from the occupied Palestinian territories.

Besides seeking to eliminate the movement, the additional escalation was aimed at enabling the settlers to return to the occupied territories as well as being an attempt at “creating a new Middle East,” he noted.

“The Israeli regime expected to realize its goals in short term after delivering blows to our leadership and equipment,” the resistance leader stated, referring to the regime’s assassination of several high-ranking Hezbollah officials, including his predecessor, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

Hezbollah, however, managed to persevere and resist on the frontline and began “crushing the enemy’s interior front to the point that it forced it into a defensive position,” he said.

“The fighters’ epic and legendary steadfastness astounded the people of the world, daunted the Israeli army, and afflicted it with despair,” said the resistance leader.

“Our enemies have suffered defeat, and their remarks bear witness to this [too],” he noted, pointing to various Israeli officials’ admission of the regime’s stopping short of realizing its war goals.

According to Sheikh Qassem, the resistance, through its outstanding performance, proved that it was prepared for warfare, and that the plans that Nasrallah had devised were effective and had taken all relevant developments into account.

“We are bearing witness to a great victory that is far beyond the victory that was achieved during the 33-Day War of 2006,” he said, referring to the Western-backed Israeli war of that year, during which the regime was forced to beat a humiliating retreat on the back of Hezbollah’s determined struggle.

“The enemy came under siege and was forced to stop the war,” Sheikh Qassem said of the movement’s debilitating strikes during the Israeli regime’s attacks against Lebanon this year, reminding that a large number of Israeli forces were killed as a result of Hezbollah’s retaliatory operations that resulted in the Israeli military’s “hitting a dead end.”

Sheikh Qassem, meanwhile, noted that the regime had also counted upon igniting the flames of “internal sedition” in Lebanon, but fell short of doing so in light of favorable cooperation among various Lebanese tribes, factions, and forces.

(Source: Press TV)