Israel is pushing for war, warns Hizbollah

LEBANON’S Hizbollah accused Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government of pushing the region to war in Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and warned nowhere in Israel would be safe if such a conflict were to erupt.

Tensions have risen this year between Iran-backed Hizbollah and its arch enemy Israel. Israel has said it would use all its strength from the start in any new war with Hizbollah.

In a speech to followers, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, said the Israeli government did not have “a correct assessment of where this war will lead if they ignite it”, and did not know how it would end.

“They do not have a correct picture about what is awaiting them if they go to the idiocy of this war,” he said.

Nasrallah said earlier this year that a future Israeli war against Syria or Lebanon could draw thousands of fighters from countries such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Pakistan.

Israel is concerned by Tehran’s steadily increasing influence in the region during the six-year-old Syrian conflict, whether via its own Revolutionary Guard forces or the groups it backs, especially Hizbollah.

Nasrallah was speaking yesterday on the occasion of Ashura, when Shia Muslims commemorate the slaying of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson, the Imam Hussein, at Kerbala in 680.