Hezbollah Appoints Qassem as Secretary-General… Qomati Responds to Gallant: “Our Missiles Are Intact” /  Division 98 Bleeds in Al-Khiam Plain as Division 36 Bled in the Battles of Aita al-Shaab

 October 30, 2024

The political editor wrote

With Hamas’s announcement of its readiness to engage in a negotiation process according to new initiatives currently being prepared by CIA Director William Burns – and the Mossad chief present in Doha to participate – alongside the tripartite U.S.-Egyptian-Qatari assembly, the essential elements for negotiation appear in place. However, the initiatives remain unfinished, and sources following the developments indicate that Burns is proceeding slowly to avoid failure. He is attempting to gauge proposals that neither Hamas nor the occupying government will outright reject.

Meanwhile, on the Lebanese front, no significant progress has been made in negotiations. The occupying entity has revised its demands, lowering them from calls for extensive air, sea, and land privileges at the expense of Lebanese sovereignty as a price for ending the war, to an offer to trade its failing ground campaign for ‘mechanisms’ that ensure Hezbollah cannot rearm by land, sea, or air. The occupier has also resurrected the framework of Resolution 1701 as a means to secure border stability – interpreted this time to meet the entity’s renewed demands, akin to its manoeuvres during the 2006 July War, before it ultimately accepted Lebanon’s interpretation of the resolution, which Hezbollah honoured over the past eighteen years. The occupying entity, however, failed to uphold any of its obligations, continuing to violate Lebanon’s airspace and waters, retain Lebanese territories under occupation, and refuse a UN solution for the Shebaa Farms issue as mandated by Resolution 1701. This intransigence kept the ceasefire clause of the resolution unrealized, leaving the situation fragile and prone to ignition prior to the Al-Aqsa flood, and exposing it to potential eruption over the continued occupation of the Lebanese section of Ghajar, occupied in 2006.

The resistance, for its part, places little weight on a political scene filled only with verbal manoeuvring that has not yet ripened into true negotiations, especially as the occupier remains under the delusion that its ground offensive can persist and is open to halting it only in exchange for concessions. The resistance believes that the campaign’s continuation will bring further failures, which would, in turn, cultivate conditions for serious negotiations. Consequently, the resistance is focusing on aligning its priorities, as demonstrated by its recent announcement of Sheikh Naim Qassem’s election as Secretary-General of Hezbollah and leader of the Islamic Resistance. Additionally, Hezbollah’s Deputy Political Council Chairman Mahmoud Qomati responded to the occupying Defense Minister’s claims of destroying 80% of Hezbollah’s missile capacity, stating that the resistance’s missile forces remain fully operational, including assets the occupier has yet to encounter.

For the resistance, the battlefield holds sway. Thus, the ongoing two-day clashes in Al-Khiam Plain served as an opportunity to inflict painful blows on Division 98, which is considered the second elite force alongside Division 36 among the troops massed on the Lebanese border. Division 98 has now experienced some of the same losses that Division 36 endured in the battles of Aita al-Shaab. Meanwhile, the resistance’s missile force continues to strike the forward edge of the front, where occupying forces are concentrated, as well as deeper into northern Palestine. Yesterday, nine settlements out of the twenty-five previously advised to evacuate were targeted.