Hezbollah leader says Israel to lose war even if it strikes Rafah

"The Israeli army today is tired and exhausted on all fronts," Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address on Wednesday, adding, "The enemy's senior experts acknowledge the strategic losses."

Israel launched the war against Gaza on October 7 after Al-Aqsa Storm, a surprise operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups against the occupied territories that was staged in retaliation for the intensification of Tel Aviv’s decades-long crimes against Palestinians.

The regime has so far during the war killed more than 31,300 Gazans, most of them women, children, and adolescents.

"Gaza, which resists, fights, and endures in a scene close to a miracle and astonishing the world, is the culture of the Qur'an and it is a divine proof for the whole world," Nasrallah said.

So far, during the military onslaught, the Israeli army has officially acknowledged losing around 590 forces and officers as a result of the resistance’s operations. The fatalities include 248, who have been killed in ground battles.

Narallah, however, asserted, "The number of its dead is very large and much greater than [what has been] announced," adding, "We announce our martyrs on live broadcasts, but the enemy hides its dead, and this has an impact on the Israeli army."

The Hezbollah leader noted that "on the northern front, there is extreme secrecy about the losses in terms of [Israeli] soldiers, military vehicles, and others."

"After five months, the Israeli army has a shortage of personnel and wants to recruit 14,500 officers and soldiers and even wants to recruit the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Israelis)," Nasrallah noted.

He also pointed to a pledge by Tel Aviv to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where the majority of the coastal territory's 2.4-million-strong population has taken refuge from the ravages of the war.

The regime claims that by conducting the invasion, it will have realized its ambition of "eliminating" the Gaza-based resistance movement of Hamas.
Nasrallah, however, radically rejected the claim.

"Today, in the sixth month [of the war], [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu stands up to say that if we do not go to Rafah, we will lose the war," the Hezbollah leader said.

"We say to Netanyahu that even if you go to Rafah, you have lost the war and you cannot eliminate Hamas or the resistance, despite all the massacres," he added.

"One of the signs of defeat for the enemy is that the occupation is negotiating with Hamas in the sixth month of the war," Nasrallah stated, adding, "Hamas is negotiating today on behalf of the resistance and not from a position of weakness, and it sets the conditions."

He reminded that resistance fronts all across the region, namely in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, were performing their duty towards lending support to their fellow resistance fighters in Gaza.

"We affirm our stand with the Palestinian resistance factions, especially with the leadership of Hamas...and we continue on the support fronts," the Hezbollah leader said.

"The Islamic resistance in Iraq and its sending of marches and missiles to the entity is ongoing and ongoing," Nasrallah noted, commending the Arab country's resistance movements' pro-Gaza operations.

"The support fronts are completing their work and we praise the Yemen front and its effects and blessings are very great, especially on the enemy’s economy," he stated.

"Neither the Americans nor the British nor the Europeans who followed them were able to prevent the Yemeni brothers from striking ships heading to occupied Palestine," Nasrallah said.

He was referring to anti-Yemeni strikes by the United States or those of its allies in the UK and Europe that have been launched in a failed attempt to stop Yemen's pro-Palestinian operations.

Nasrallah, meanwhile, noted that the United States could easily end the ongoing aggression against Gaza and the simultaneous attacks that the Israeli regime has been staging against Lebanon.

"With the stroke of a pen, US President Joe Biden can stop the aggression in Gaza and Lebanon."

Earlier in the month, however, Biden alleged in an interview with The New Yorker that the Israeli war machine still had to be given "a little bit of time."