Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah threatened on Friday to strike multiple targets in Israel, including Tel Aviv.
Speaking on the occasion of the completion of the Waad project, aimed at rebuilding parts of the southern suburbs of Beirut that were damaged in the July-August 2006 war between Lebanon and Israel, Nasrallah said Hizbullah could target Tel Aviv in any future war with the Jewish state.
“We are capable of not only hitting specific targets in Tel Aviv but also any place in occupied Palestine,” he said, according to a report in the Lebanon-based Daily Star.
“The era has come when we survive while they will be doomed to extinction,” Nasrallah added. “For every building that is destroyed in the southern suburbs, several buildings will be destroyed in Tel Aviv in return.”
He said that “The era when our homes get destroyed and theirs remain [intact] is over.”
This week, a senior Israeli military officer warned that any Hizbullah retaliation to an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would prompt Israel to launch a war in Lebanon.
The officer, who spoke to the British Telegraph, said the war would be so ferocious that it would take a decade to rebuild the villages it destroys.
“The situation in Lebanon after this war will be horrible,” the officer said. “They will have to think about whether they want it or not. I hope that Iran will not push them into a war that Iran will not pay the price for but that Lebanon will.”
Meanwhile, recently uploaded satellite images to Google Earth reveal what appears to be a Hizbullah terror training ground constructed after the 2006 Lebanon War.
According to military analysts, the facility near Janta in the Bekaa Vaalley includes a suspected driver training course, a 100-meter firing range, and a possible urban terrain assault course.
The Google Earth images also reveal considerable overt construction activity in sealed-off Hizbullah security pockets in southern Lebanon, particularly in the hills south of Jezzine.