Hezbollah has “dozens” of times more fighters who seek martyrdom than they did during the 1982 Lebanon War, a senior official of the terror group has warned Israel.

Nawaf Mousawi, a Lebanese member of Parliament from Hezbollah’s bloc, also claimed during an interview on Lebanese television that the Shia Islamist group’s fighters “love” war and “crave” a ground war with Israel.

“Israel is talking about a ground war, okay, [but] they have never had the upper hand when we met them in a ground war,” Mousawi said on Al-Manar TV on September 10. “I know that we have fighters who crave a ground war, to the point that they are willing to grab Israel by the neck and drag him into a ground war.”

The comments came just a few days before Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced an expansion of Israel’s goals in the current conflict to include the return of northern residents who were evacuated due to Hezbollah rocket fire.

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said the “possibility for an agreement [with Hamas] is running out as Hezbollah continues to tie itself to Hamas, and refuses to end the conflict”.

Hezbollah officials have previously indicated the group would stand down if a ceasefire agreement is reached between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, while Israel has maintained that it cannot allow militants to amass in the border area in Lebanon’s south.
Mousawi said: “If they [Israel] want to disrupt the security in the region and the whole world – so be it. They are using the language of war with us, while we are lovers of war. After all, fighting is what we do.

“If you asked me, I would have told you that I support a ground war. Only in a ground war can we smash their heads and break their backs.”

He further warned the IDF that it should “remember” who Hezbollah is. “We are the same people we were in 1982, and there is a new generation. We had martyrdom seekers in 1982, and you think that we don’t have them now? Today, there are dozens-time more martyrdom seekers than there were in 1982.”

Months of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel have killed hundreds of mostly combatants in Lebanon, and dozens of civilians and soldiers on the Israeli side, with tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border forced to flee their homes.