“It’s fantastic”, “the death of a terrorist”: many Israelis did not hide their joy today at the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was presented by the Israeli army as “one of Israel’s greatest enemies”.

The military announced this morning that Nasrallah, the secretary general of Lebanon’s Shiite movement for three decades, was killed by an Israeli strike on Friday night in Beirut. Even before Hezbollah confirmed his death, which happened in the afternoon, many Israelis expressed their “relief” to AFP.

“It’s fantastic news, it should have been done a long time ago,” said David Salev, a Tel Aviv resident. Although he doubts that killing Nasrallah will end rocket fire into northern Israel, he said it sends a clear message to his country’s enemies in the region: “Don’t mess with us.”

“All we want is for the world to understand that we will not let them massacre us,” commented Yossi Koren, a 70-year-old strategic consultant who lives in the Jerusalem area. “Israel will no longer play with the glove.”

Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel soon after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. He says he is acting this way in support of Hamas.

Lena Gordine fled her home in northern Israel because of the almost daily border clashes. She ended up with her family in a Jerusalem hotel and today said she felt “proud” when she read the army’s announcement.

“It will take time but we are getting closer to the time when we will be able to return to our homes,” he said.

After 11 months of shelling and fighting in the Gaza Strip, Israel announced on September 18 that its war effort was shifting to the north, where, like Gordine, tens of thousands of residents have been displaced by recent rocket fire. In ten days of intense shelling of Hezbollah strongholds, several important commanders of its armed wing were killed. Yesterday, it was the turn of its supreme leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

In the coastal city of Rishon Lezion, south of Tel Aviv, Sully Diaz called the Israeli strike that killed Nasrallah an “impressive act”. “I believe that killing Nasrallah will end the war, I believe that it will bring about some political solution – at least I hope so,” he said.

“We are celebrating the death of the number 1 terrorist in the world,” said another Rishon Lezion resident, Rami Steiner. “It is an opportunity to live in a new era, in a better world without terrorists,” he argued.

However, 77-year-old historian Shosana Bari Issoni hopes that “the next leader of Hezbollah will not be worse than Nasrallah”, noting that “you never know, when you kill a leader, who will be next”.