Hezbollah chief meets Hamas, PIJ leaders to plan strategy against Israel

The three Iranian-backed terror groups “assessed the steps to be taken” to achieve “an all-out victory,” said Al-Manar TV.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah met Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leaders to discuss cooperative strategies against Israel as the war with Hamas enters its 18th day, Hezbollah mouthpiece Al-Manar reported Wednesday.

PIJ Secretary General Ziad Nakhale and Hamas deputy chief Saleh Al-Arouri reported on “the recent developments in the Gaza Strip,” from the day Hamas, together with its much smaller rival, invaded Israel, “and its subsequent ramifications at all levels,” said the TV station.

“The triumvirate… assessed the international and regional stances as well as steps to be taken by the Axis of Resistance in this critical phase in order to achieve an all-out victory,” the report added.

All three groups are funded and armed by Iran, as are other so-called organizations in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. There are reports that fighters from at least some of these further-afield groups are coming to Israel’s northern border on Iran’s order to join the “axis.”

Some 2,000 armed terrorists and over a thousand Gazan supporters attacked two dozen kibbutzim and other communities in a surprise assault on October 7, murdering 1,400, most of them civilians, and taking at least 220 hostages back to the Gaza Strip.

Israel immediately declared war, calling it Operation Iron Swords, and vowed to wipe out the group once and for all. The IDF has said that its forces have killed to date some 1,500 of the terrorists who came into Israel, as well as thousands more in its bombing campaign of military targets in Gaza, including several senior Hamas operatives.

Hezbollah has so far taken limited action in support of Hamas. This has included dozens of rocket launchings at northern Israeli villages and military positions, and direct confrontations with IDF troops that have collectively killed six Israeli soldiers and one civilian to date.

It has lost some 40 terrorists to Israeli retaliation, with the IDF successfully targeting several rocket-launching squads other terrorist positions from the air, as well as with precise artillery fire over the border.

Hezbollah is the best equipped and largest Iranian proxy by far, holding the biggest arsenal of rockets, over 150,000 by Israeli estimates, some of which can even reach Israel’s south. If it opens a true second front as it has warned it will do if Israel begins a ground incursion into Gaza, Jerusalem has threatened to flatten Lebanon, as the terror group is an official part of the country’s government.

Thousands of Israeli troops have been sent to the north in a show of force, and the residents of 28 communities up to five kilometers from the border have been evacuated to safer areas of the country.

The Wall Street Journal reported two weeks ago that senior Hamas and Hezbollah officials said that officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had planned the October 7 attack, including its tactics and strategy, during several joint meetings in Lebanon in recent months. Other Hamas officials denied the report, saying they had acted alone.