Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has launched a new attack on the Egyptian leadership, asking: "Does Egypt's ruler need more than 650 dead and 2,500 injured to finally and really open the Rafah crossing and help the people of Gaza for the sake of victory?" Hezbollah will deal with the accomplices against Gaza as adversaries and enemies, Nasrallah said in a televised statement. Addressing President Mubarak, he said: "All you have to do is to open the crossing and not to wage a war."
"We weren't hostile to those who colluded against us in the July 2006 war, but we will be to accomplices against Gaza, its people and its resistance and to whoever takes part in the bloodshed over there and close doors of life and salvation."
Nasrallah described the decision taken by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to expel the Israeli ambassador of his country as a "slap on the faces of all those who host Israeli ambassadors in their capitals and do not dare to expel them."
For their part, security and political experts belittled the importance of the war of words launched by Hezbollah against Cairo, describing such statements as "emotional" and aimed at exploiting the Egyptian street's sympathy with the Palestinians to put pressures on the Egyptian government. Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri called on Muslims to strike Israeli targets around the world because of the Israeli campaign on the Gaza Strip. In an audio tape aired by a US website, Al-Zawahiri said Muslims have to hit the interests of the Zionists and the Crusaders in any place and with any possible means.
He called for strikes and demonstrations in Egypt till the siege imposed on Gaza is lifted. Hours after releasing the tape, the US embassy in Khartoum said threats against Westerners had been made, calling on US citizens not to go to public places in Sudan.
