When the Resistance Becomes the Enemy’s Destiny

Translated by Staff, Al-Akhbar

There are two notable phenomena in the political scene accompanying the tension at the southern borders: the “Israeli” enemy’s failure to make threats of fire and mass destruction, and the Resistance’s opponents in Lebanon not interacting seriously with the issue. In Tel Aviv, “Israeli” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an order to ministers and officials that the situation in the north should not be addressed. Yesterday [Sunday], he was content with presenting a well-known position which guaranteed that Lebanon be held responsible for any action by Hezbollah. But the practical measure that the enemy's Prime Minister insists on is asking his security and military leaders to work on thwarting Hezbollah’s painful, proportional or deterrent response. This is what the military and security establishment translate with a great alert at the northern front.

In Lebanon, people were distracted from the situation in the South, having been preoccupied with the economic crisis, the COVID-19 outbreak and the high number of casualties. However, there are other considerations to the matter, including Hezbollah’s silence regarding the situation and the group being unheeding towards “Israeli” threats. Beyond that, prominent Lebanese parties are convinced that no one can prevent the Resistance from exercising its right to respond to enemy crimes. As a result, it can be concluded that the enemy – its government, army, media and monitors – is in a high state of anxiety in contrast to Lebanon. Though, this is not an invitation for anyone to volunteer to participate in the “Israeli” intimidation campaign, but rather a description and a drawing of attention that all acrobats will not prevent what is inevitable.

Meanwhile, shedding light on the situation at hand, it can be notice that the hostile mobilization on the borders with Lebanon is at its highest. The escalating military measures include deployment of additional forces and the launching of the broadest human, technical and intelligence work, in conjunction with repeated threatening messages. But these actions coincided with a sudden recommendation by the “Israeli” army’s Chief of Staff, Aviv Kochavi – whom the enemy overwhelmed us by referring to as a brilliant commander and a brave and courageous officer – as he asks his officers and soldiers to hide from the screen and not to leave any loopholes that Hezbollah might make us to implement its response. All this leads to a preliminary conclusion, that the enemy despairs the possibility of non-response, and acts on the basis that the response is inevitable and that its timing is no longer linked to a political situation, to a speech or a position, but rather to a field situation that the enemy is trying to contain around the clock. Even one of the “Israeli” military correspondents said yesterday [Sunday]: "It has been decided, Hezbollah has deployed its groups to the field, and we are witnessing the peak of the army's mobilization on the borders with Lebanon and with Syria as well”.

At this point, the enemy's leadership understood that the response has a deterrent dimension for sure; and therefore it will be done clearly and unambiguously, and will target enemy soldiers rather than a civilian facility. This is a test issue for everyone. But what many of us and the enemy must understand is that the Resistance’s response to a crime committed by the enemy in Syria has its deterrent dimension in Lebanon as well. The enemy is well aware that when the Resistance decides on a deterrent response from Lebanon to a crime which occurred in Syria, this means that the Resistance is telling them they must stop committing what they call "mistakes" in Syria, and not even think about trying to approach Lebanon. Indeed, the enemy knows that the harsh response which awaits them for their crime in Damascus may not be worth anything in comparison to response to any crime that they may commit in Lebanon.

It is true that the enemy has tried, during the past few days, through dull and traditional diplomacy, to market a sick prank saying that what they did is just a mistake, but they did so, seeking the world to intervene in preventing the Resistance from responding, or that the response be nominal at best.

The enemy never gets tired from pushing its luck with us. Experience has taught them that things do not go according to their logic. However, they played the same game again, especially when they tried to introduce the principle of "mistake" into the operational dictionary, knowingly that this "mistake" is only a complete tactical strategy. And when matters are left at their behest, they will commit a lot of mistakes daily and won’t mind issuing after every mistake a statement of apology, knowing that the enemy is trying to test the Resistance, to see whether it is deterred or not. The enemy proposes the principle of mistakes as if offering the Resistance an alternative to its threats of responding. Accordingly, the enemy will act in the manner it actually thinks, that the Resistance has been deterred and is unable to act. And just because this illusion still occupies the enemy's mind, the response is more than inevitable.

There is no need to return to the long narratives regarding the basis from which the enemy and the Resistance act upon. But there is a definite need to address people, both here and in the region, who are addicted to thinking about how to benefit from any “Israeli” aggression; to say that what is happening in these hours and what may happen in the coming hours or days, is the work of the occupation forces themselves from the beginning of the entity’s wars in Lebanon. Starting from the launch of the Resistance and up to the time of liberation and then the 2006 war including the battles between wars – in all these instances – the decision of the war was in the hands of the enemy exclusively, and the Resistance did not initiate the declaration of war. However, it has always said – and it means what it says – that it does not want war. But this is not accomplished at whatever cost. In the sense that the Resistance, which does not want war, does not want to surrender to avoid war. Let the braggers of sovereignty and independence think about it a little, to realize that if the Resistance wanted to wage war or open fire along the entity’s northern front entity, it would have done this over and over again, and it had a thousand arguments.

Today, matters settle for a new round of open confrontation with the enemy. The role of the Resistance and its response are to make it clear that what is enshrined in four decades will not change; that the sacrifices made are not for sale; and that whoever wants to dictate new facts must pay the price and he has no guarantee that he will succeed. The Resistance is to assert to its people as to its enemy, that it is "not having fun " nor wasting time, and that its internal concerns or the developments in the region were never at the expense of its primary and central role in deterring the aggression and liberating the land. This simply means that we have to be prepared, as we have always been, to stand by these men who paint for us and our children the portrait of a country that is truly free from occupation, terrorism and subordination.