JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed on Tuesday that Israeli forces have killed the would-be successors of late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, without naming them.

“Today, Hezbollah is weaker than it has been for many, many years,” Netanyahu said in a pre-recorded video message directed at the people of Lebanon.

He claimed that the Israeli forces “degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities”, took out thousands of Hezbollah members, including “Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of the replacement.”

It was not immediately clear who Netanyahu meant by the “replacement of the replacement”.

He attempted to blame those resisting the occupying Israeli forces for the sufferings and destruction. Christians, Druze, Muslims were suffering because of Hezbollah’s war, he said, claiming that Israel has “a right to defend itself”.

He also warned Lebanon that it would fall into the abyss of a long war that would lead to destruction and suffering like Gaza.

Earlier, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to replace Has­san Nasrallah, had pro­bably been “eliminated”.

Hashem Safieddine, a top Hezbollah official, was widely expected to succeed Nasrallah. Safieddine has not been heard from publicly since an Israeli air strike late last week.

“Hezbollah is an organisation without a head. Nasrallah was eliminated, his replacement was probably also eliminated,” Gallant told officers at the Israeli military’s northern command centre, in a brief video segment distributed by the military. “There’s no one to make decisions, no one to act,” he said.

Meanwhile, Israel’s military claimed it had killed a figure responsible for Hezbollah’s budgeting and logistics, Suhail Hussein Husseini, during a strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Monday night.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2024