CNN’s Diamond: Israel’s ‘Escalations’ ‘Have Prompted Hezbollah’ to Attack More

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN International’s “First Move,” CNN Jerusalem Correspondent Jeremy Diamond stated that “the escalations we’ve seen over the course of the last week and a half have prompted Hezbollah to go further than they have before,” and the strike against Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is “the latest in a series of escalations that we have seen the Israeli military and its government carry out over the course of the last week and a half.”

Diamond said that the Nasrallah strike “marks just the latest in a series of escalations that we have seen the Israeli military and its government carry out over the course of the last week and a half. And that’s because the Israeli government has really, clearly, chosen and articulated this strategy of continuing to escalate this war with Hezbollah to the point where we are now seeing this very real risk of things escalating much, much more significantly. So far, we have seen Hezbollah fire some 65 rockets into northern Israel in the aftermath of that very significant strike in Beirut. But, if, indeed, this strike was targeting Hassan Nasrallah, if he was injured, if he was killed, I think you are going to expect to see a very, very significant response from Hezbollah. And even just the death toll alone from this strike, which is only just starting to come in, but given that several buildings in that area appear to have been flattened, it will be very significant. That, in and of itself, I think, will likely prompt a very significant retaliatory response from Hezbollah. We will see how that all unfolds.”

He continued, “Up until now, the escalations we’ve seen over the course of the last week and a half have prompted Hezbollah to go further than they have before, but still far short of what Israeli officials have been telling me for months they expected to see from Hezbollah in the event of a significant escalation. And that is not hundreds of rockets a day, but hundreds of rockets being fired simultaneously into Israel, perhaps thousands of rockets a day. That we have not yet seen.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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