Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Wednesday evening that “challenging days are ahead” for Israel as it braces for attacks from Iran and its regional proxies following the assassinations of Hezbollah’s top military commander in Beirut and Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Speaking from Israel's military
headquarters in Tel Aviv at the end of a three-hour-long security cabinet
meeting, Netanyahu said Israel was facing threats from across the region
following the killing of Faud Shukr, whom he called “Hezbollah’s chief of staff,”
in Beirut on Tuesday night.
“We are ready for every
scenario,” he promised, “and will stand united and determined against every
threat.” He added: “Israel will exact a very heavy price for any aggression
against us.”
Israel was on high alert
Tuesday evening as it prepared to face retaliation for the attacks. The
killings and expectations of a response have fueled further concern that the
conflict in Gaza was turning into a wider Middle East war.
The Israeli strike in Beirut
was carried out in retaliation for a deadly Hezbollah rocket attack on a Golan
Heights Druze town Saturday that killed 12 children in a soccer field. Israel
has said Shukr was responsible for the attack.
Iran’s official Fars News
Agency reported Wednesday night July 31, that Iranian military adviser Milad
Bedi had also been killed in the Beirut strike that killed Shukr. Bedi was in
the building where Israel targeted Shukr and his body was identified on
Wednesday, the report said.
“The murder of innocent children has been
added to the unending suffering of the residents in the north, our dear ones
who have been exiled from their homes, and whose communities have suffered
serious attacks — and for this we will not be silent.”
“Everyone who takes aim at our
children, everyone who murders our citizens, everyone who9 harms our country —
their blood is on their own head,” Netanyahu added.
In his Wednesday address,
Netanyahu asserted that he has been under pressure, domestically and abroad, to
end the war in Gaza.
I did not give in to those
voices then, and I don’t give in to them now,” he said.
Had he listened to them, the PM
argued, Israel would not have taken out Hamas leaders and fighters, destroyed
infrastructure, taken the Gaza-Egypt border area, or “created the conditions
that bring us closer to terms that will not only bring our hostages back, but
also allow us to achieve all of our objectives for the war.
“All of the achievements in
recent months were attained because we did not give in,” Netanyahu said, “and
because we made brave decisions in the face of great pressure at home and
abroad. And I tell you it was not easy.
“Together we will fight, and
with God’s help, together we will win,” he concluded.
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