Hezbollah all set but not seeking war
Monday, May 7, 2007
HEZBOLLAH guerrillas, the bane of successive Israeli governments, have rearmed since last year's war in Lebanon but have little interest in provoking a new one, analysts say.
Israel has complained about Hezbollah's resupply effort, but it too seems unlikely to plunge into any fresh conflict until it has digested the lessons of the previous one. Israel is also preoccupied with the political firestorm around Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, rebuked by an inquiry for his handling of the war.
Lebanese security and political sources said Hezbollah had amply replenished its rocket arsenal and had received improved anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles from Iran via Syria since a United Nations-backed truce halted hostilities in August.
The Beirut government says it has no proof of arms transfers from Syria. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon discussed the issue last month with Syrian President Bashar, who opposes any move to put UN troops on the Syria-Lebanon border.
What the group took six years to achieve (after Israeli troops left Lebanon in 2000), it has achieved in six months, one political source said of Hezbollah's military build-up.
Hezbollah has also established a new defence line, with trenches, bunkers and rocket bases just north of the Litani and in the southern part of the Bekaa Valley to the east, the sources said.
They said the group has sent hundreds of fighters, both new recruits and veterans, for training in Iran more than making up for its war casualties, including 270 or so dead.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has openly stated that military preparations are under way, couching them as precautions rather than as a prelude to attack.
This week he jubilantly noted the Israeli inquiry's flaying of Olmert for his conduct of the war, in which Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah or stop it firing rockets across the border.
Today the climate in the whole of the Zionist entity is that this war was a failure, Nasrallah said on Wednesday.
Many Israelis agree, with two-thirds telling pollsters Olmert should resign. Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz argue that Israel made some gains in the war because UN peacekeepers had replaced Hezbollah fighters on the border.
A UN Security Council resolution in 2004 demanded the disarming of all militias in Lebanon. Hezbollah, the only faction to keep its weapons after the 1975-90 civil war, says it is an anti-Israel resistance movement, not a militia.
Analysts in Lebanon and Israel said Hezbollah was in no mood to go into battle again unless any US or Israeli assault on Iran's nuclear installations set off a regional conflict. Hezbollah are thumping their chests now because they are trying to get some credit for the mess in Israel, said Timur Goksel, a former spokesman for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
He said their posture was not aggressive. They get credit in the Arab world and their own community for challenging Israel in the public domain, but I don't think they'll go beyond that.
Hezbollah must consider its own people Shi'ite civilians who took the brunt of Israeli bombing and now want to rebuild. A political party as well as an armed group, Hezbollah has also been locked for months in a domestic stalemate that pits the Western-backed government against factions close to Syria.Arab News
Israel has complained about Hezbollah's resupply effort, but it too seems unlikely to plunge into any fresh conflict until it has digested the lessons of the previous one. Israel is also preoccupied with the political firestorm around Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, rebuked by an inquiry for his handling of the war.
Lebanese security and political sources said Hezbollah had amply replenished its rocket arsenal and had received improved anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles from Iran via Syria since a United Nations-backed truce halted hostilities in August.
The Beirut government says it has no proof of arms transfers from Syria. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon discussed the issue last month with Syrian President Bashar, who opposes any move to put UN troops on the Syria-Lebanon border.
What the group took six years to achieve (after Israeli troops left Lebanon in 2000), it has achieved in six months, one political source said of Hezbollah's military build-up.
Hezbollah has also established a new defence line, with trenches, bunkers and rocket bases just north of the Litani and in the southern part of the Bekaa Valley to the east, the sources said.
They said the group has sent hundreds of fighters, both new recruits and veterans, for training in Iran more than making up for its war casualties, including 270 or so dead.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has openly stated that military preparations are under way, couching them as precautions rather than as a prelude to attack.
This week he jubilantly noted the Israeli inquiry's flaying of Olmert for his conduct of the war, in which Israel failed to destroy Hezbollah or stop it firing rockets across the border.
Today the climate in the whole of the Zionist entity is that this war was a failure, Nasrallah said on Wednesday.
Many Israelis agree, with two-thirds telling pollsters Olmert should resign. Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz argue that Israel made some gains in the war because UN peacekeepers had replaced Hezbollah fighters on the border.
A UN Security Council resolution in 2004 demanded the disarming of all militias in Lebanon. Hezbollah, the only faction to keep its weapons after the 1975-90 civil war, says it is an anti-Israel resistance movement, not a militia.
Analysts in Lebanon and Israel said Hezbollah was in no mood to go into battle again unless any US or Israeli assault on Iran's nuclear installations set off a regional conflict. Hezbollah are thumping their chests now because they are trying to get some credit for the mess in Israel, said Timur Goksel, a former spokesman for UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
He said their posture was not aggressive. They get credit in the Arab world and their own community for challenging Israel in the public domain, but I don't think they'll go beyond that.
Hezbollah must consider its own people Shi'ite civilians who took the brunt of Israeli bombing and now want to rebuild. A political party as well as an armed group, Hezbollah has also been locked for months in a domestic stalemate that pits the Western-backed government against factions close to Syria.Arab News
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