Hezbollah chief joins threats against Israel ahead of Jerusalem Day Flag March

Hezbollah has joined Hamas in threatening Israel ahead of the annual Jerusalem Day Flag March scheduled for Sunday with a regional “major explosion.” 

Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist organization, blasted the parade which winds through the Israeli capital Jerusalem as a “great provocation” and emphasized that “the Palestinian resistance is unanimous in responding, and things may lead to a major explosion inside Palestine.”

Nasrallah issued the threats against Israel on Sunday during a speech at a “Liberation Day” event, marking 22 years since the Israeli army withdrew from its security zone in southern Lebanon in 2000. 

“Any attack on al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock will explode the region, as if provokes every free and honorable person,” Nasrallah declared. “The persistence in the aggression against al-Aqsa and the holy sites of the city of Jerusalem will lead to a major explosion in the region and with unimaginable consequences.”

Nasrallah did not elaborate on what Hezbollah might do militarily but stressed, “this depends on the folly of the enemy.”

The Israeli army fired tear gas at Lebanese rioters who were throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the Lebanese-Israeli border fence on Wednesday evening. 

The “Al-Aqsa is in danger” libel – which claims that Jews threaten the mosques on the Temple Mount – has been used during the past century as a political tool for inciting violence against the Jewish people. Proponents of this infamous anti-Jewish libel have included the pro-Nazi Jerusalem Mufti al-Husseini in the 1930s who supported Adolf Hitler and the late PLO terror leader Yasser Arafat. 

The Jerusalem Day event is an Israeli national annual holiday, which celebrates when Jerusalem’s Old City came under the Jewish state’s sovereignty during the Six-Day War in June 1967 including the Western Wall. Jerusalem’s sacred sites were then open to followers of all three Abrahamic faiths. When the area was under Jordanian control between 1948 to 1967, Jews were forbidden to visit the Western Wall and the Jordanian authorities heavily restricted Christian visitors. 

The Jerusalem Day event includes a nationalist parade with Israeli flags through Old City  ending at the Western Wall plaza. Attendance will reportedly be restricted at some points in Jerusalem’s Old City, according to the organizers of the Jerusalem Day “Flag March.” 

“Following limits on the numbers of people at the Western Wall, 8,000 marchers will proceed to the wall through Damascus Gate, and another 8,000 will march through Jaffa Gate,” announced the “Flag March” organizers. 

“Out of responsibility for the safety of the participants and their security, the changes were decided in coordination with a request from the Israel Police, to ensure their safe return,” added the organizers. 

Opponents of the Israeli flag march view it as a “provocation” while supporters view it as a symbol of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem’s Old City. 

On last year’s Jerusalem Day, Hamas fired rockets at the Israeli capital. This ignited 11 days of war between Hamas and Israel. Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups fired more than 4,300 rockets and mortars toward Israeli population centers during the conflict last May and Israel bombed multiple terrorist targets in Gaza. 

While there is currently a formal ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, tensions could easily escalate on the tense Israeli-Gaza border.