Hezbollah's chief says Israel's failure to achieve its goals in the Gaza Strip marks the second defeat for Israel in recent years. Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah congratulated the victory of Hamas over Israeli three-week long military campaign in the Gaza Strip in a phone conversation with Hamas Political Chief Khalid Mashaal, Lebanese al-Nahar daily reported Wednesday. "It is the second time in two and a half years that the Zionist enemy is defeated," Nasrallah was quoted referring to Hezbollah's 33-day war with Israel in 2006.
The Hezbollah secretary-general also praised other Palestinian resistance movements for being united against Israel during the Gaza war, which claimed the lives of more than 1,340 Palestinians and left over 5,320 others wounded.
Israel ended its offensive against Gaza on Saturday by declaring a unilateral ceasefire without having achieved any of the objectives it was seeking in the coastal sliver. Some officials in Tel Aviv had said toppling the democratically-elected ruler of the strip, Hamas, was the main objective in Gaza. Other officials later said they only sought to weaken the Hamas movement and end rocket attacks against Israeli towns.
In response to Tel Aviv's unilateral ceasefire, Hamas brought a ceasefire into effect on Sunday but gave Israel a one-week ultimatum to completely withdraw from the Palestinian territory and end its 18-month blockade of the coastal enclave.
An Israeli army spokesman confirmed Wednesday that Tel Aviv had completed its troop pullout from Gaza. According to a Press TV correspondent at the Rafah border crossing, Israeli officials refused to allow Human Rights Watch and aid agencies to cross the border into the beleaguered strip Wednesday.