Hezbollah chief: Islamic State carrying out new Nakba in Mideast

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Thursday that the Islamic State was carrying out a new “Nakba” in the Middle East, employing the Arabic word for catastrophe traditionally used by the Palestinians and the Arab world to refer to the 1948 creation of the State of Israel.

Nasrallah’s remarks, coming as Israel celebrated its 68th Independence Day, including a harsh attack on the US, which he accused of creating the Islamic State terror group to extend hegemony over the region.

Noting that the day marked the anniversary of Israel’s creation, Nasrallah said that a “similar Nakba” was taking place in the region at the hands of the Islamic State, which controls swathes of land in Syria and Iraq and is infamous for the wanton killing of male members of non-Sunni minority groups and the enslaving of their women and girls.

The difference “between the current Nakba and the one of 1948,” Nasrallah added, was that “there are groups that currently exist that will stand in the way of this new Nakba,” in reference to Hezbollah, a Shiite group whose members have been fighting alongside Iranian forces and Assad’s military since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in March 2011.

His address broadcast over satellite on Thursday, as Israel marked its 68th Independence Day.

The Hezbollah leader further blamed the United States for the rise of the terror group, going as far as accusing Washington of creating — and funding — IS to fight its and Israel’s enemies in the Middle East.

The US “and its regional allies have brought takfiri [non-believers] and barbaric terrorist groups aimed at destroying the spirit and will of the resistance,” said the Hezbollah leader.

“Islamic State is a means to achieve US goals, as demonstrated through the return of American troops in Iraq,” he said according to Lebanese news site Naharnet.

“The West does not have a problem with Muslims, but with the movements and people who reject Israeli occupation of Palestine. They have a problem with all those who reject foreign hegemony in the region,” he said.

“They want IS to reach all of Iran’s borders and even within Iran itself,” he added. “They sought to fight us through direct means, such as the 2006 war with Israel, but they failed and so they are seeking the same method they adopted when they fought the Soviet Union.”

Nasrallah claimed the West was now “paying the price” for IS “as we have seen in Paris and Brussels,” in reference to the coordinated terror attacks in the French capital last November that claimed 130 lives and the attacks in the Belgian capital in March which killed over 30 people.