Thousands of Lebanese supporters of the militant group Hezbollah thronged Beirut on Friday (November 3) to watch a televised speech by the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah.
His remarks were the first since the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
In his almost 90-minute speech, Nasrallah praised the Hamas attack four weeks ago in which the militants attacked farming villages and military posts killing over 1,400 Israeli civilians before returning inside Gaza with hostages.
"This great, large-scale operation was purely the result of Palestinian planning and implementation," Nasrallah said, suggesting his militia - which was labeled by several Western nations as a terrorist organization and an ally of Hamas - had no part in the attack. "The great secrecy made this operation greatly successful."
His speech was widely anticipated throughout the Levant as a sign of whether the Israel-Hamas War would spiral into a wider conflict. Since the beginning of the war, Hezbollah has taken calculated steps to keep Israel's military busy on its border with Lebanon without escalating into an all-out war.
The speech itself was also calculated, the BBC reported, but the narrative could also be subject to change in the future.
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Blinken Visits Israel
According to the Associated Press, the speech came a day after the most significant escalation in clashes since the beginning of the war and on the same day as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Israel to urge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protect civilians as Israeli troops continue to tighten its grip on Gaza City.
His visit to Israel was the third since the war began as Israeli troops laid siege to the settlement.
In remarks to reporters before departing Washington on Thursday (November 2), Blinken said he planned to talk with Netanyahu's war cabinet about the "ongoing campaign against the Hamas terrorist organization" and "steps that need to be taken to protect civilians."
A diplomatic source told CNN on the condition of anonymity that Blinken was expected to push Israel for a "pause" in airstrikes on Gaza to "allow for mediation," without specifying a timeline for such and whether it was humanitarian or otherwise.
Blinken also assured Israeli President Isaac Herzog that they were "determined to do everything" possible to bring the hostages back safely to their loved ones as protesters could be heard outside the meeting demanding the release of the hostages.
Herzog, on the other hand, sought to emphasize that his country was following international humanitarian law, presenting to Blinken a leaflet dropped to the residents of Gaza City to temporarily leave the area as Hamas has been digging inside - and underneath - the city. Israel has also "carried out six million text messages and four million phone calls to the citizens of Gaza according to the rules of international law" to warn them of the Israeli attack in advance.
Blinken would also visit Jordan to meet King Abdullah II.
