Hezbollah's Nasrallah: For every operative killed we will kill one soldier

An IDF soldier will die in retaliation for each Hezbollah operative killed by Israel, Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday.

“Let the Israelis understand that whenever they kill one of our mujahideen [jihadists], we will kill one of their soldiers,” he said in a televised speech marking the end of the Shi’ite holiday of Ashura. “We are committed to an equation. Our objective is not revenge but punishment and to establish a balance of deterrence.”

“Everything that has happened” since the death of Hezbollah operative Ali Kamel Mohsen “is part of the punishment,” Nasrallah said.

“If the resistance fighters carried out 100 operations and have not killed a Zionist soldier, the attacks will continue until the equation is equal again,” he said.

Israel has been bracing for a possible attack by the terrorist group after an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria on July 20 killed one of its members.

A response to the deadly strike was “inevitable,” Hezbollah said at the time. After the threat, Israel barred military vehicles from driving on certain border roads and deployed reinforcements with advanced intelligence and precision-fire systems to its northern borders.

As tensions along the northern border with Lebanon subsided in mid-August, the IDF began to scale back troop reinforcements and other heightened security measures that had been put in place.

The defense establishment determined that Hezbollah would not carry out an attack following the explosion in Beirut Port, but the IDF has remained on high alert in the North.

“We are not in a hurry to respond to Israel,” Nasrallah said. “Your soldiers will eventually appear on the roads.”

There have been three failed attacks along the Lebanese border since the July 20 airstrike.

Last week, soldiers were fired upon in a suspected sniper attack near Kibbutz Manara in the Upper Galilee. The soldiers were in the field when they heard gunfire directed at them, a person familiar with the matter told The Jerusalem Post. The IDF fired dozens of smoke shells and flares to stop the gunfire and identify the shooters.

Though no identifications were confirmed, helicopters and fighter jets struck Hezbollah posts along the border.

In his speech on Sunday, Nasrallah said the recent peace accord between the United Arab Emirates and Israel was treason.

“We condemn all attempts to acknowledge Israel and all forms of normalization with this enemy,” he said. “We renew our condemnation of the stance of the officials in the UAE. Any such agreement is treason.”