BEIRUT: The Lebanese government will be held fully accountable for any security deterioration along the Lebanon-Israel border, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned on Tuesday.
Addressing the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Barak said Israel would make no distinction between the Lebanese government and military action carried out by Hizbullah.
“We will not accept a separation between the responsibility of Hizbullah and the responsibility of the Lebanese government,” Israeli website Ynet reported Barak as saying.
“If, in the future there is deterioration in the North [of Israel], Lebanon will be held responsible because, among other things, it has not upheld Resolution 1701 and additional agreements” calling for the disarmament of Hizbullah, the minister said, referring to the UN Security Council resolution that ended Israel’s 34-day war on Lebanon in July-August 2006.
Israel “sees itself as free to act on anything deduced from this,” he added.
“Syria is helping Hizbullah arm as well,” Barak said, reiterating long-standing accusations that Damascus allows Iranian armaments to be transported through Syria to Hizbullah.
Barak’s come after Israel’s Deputy Premier Silvan Shalom on July 29 accused the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) of being the principal backer of Hizbullah after the Shiite group’s closest allies, Iran and Syria.
Rather than disarming Hizbullah in compliance with Resolution 1701, the LAF is allowing the group to restock its military arsenal by failing to confiscate weapons Iran sends through Damascus and Syria’s Latakia Port, Shalom said.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, US newspaper the World Tribune reported that Israel had “intensified” military preparations for a new war with Hizbullah.
According to the report, the Israeli army has created a special training program to prepare troops to cross the border, outdo Hizbullah’s bunker and tunnel network in South Lebanon and to shorten the duration of any future conflict.
“We were totally unprepared for the last war [in 2006], and we took weeks learning on the job,” the newspaper quoted an Israeli official as saying. “This time we intend to confront Hizbullah knowing exactly its assets and capabilities.”
According to the newspaper, the Israeli army has constructed mock villages and mountainous terrain meant to replicate those found in South Lebanon. One particular training facility has recreated the Shebaa Farms, a mountainous Lebanese region currently occupied by Israel.
“Hizbullah has restored its network of safe houses, tunnels and bunkers,” the official said. “This would enable Hizbullah fights to enter one house and come out of another entrance nearly a kilometer away.”
According to report, Tel Aviv has increased its military drills “amid an alert” along the border, following the explosion last month of a supposed military cache belonging to Hizbullah.
The report comes one day after the LAF issued a statement criticizing Tel Aviv for “incessant violations of UNSC Resolution 1701” following a violation Lebanese territorial sovereignty on Sunday. Two Israeli warplanes entered Lebanese airspace Sunday evening and “threw hot air balloons over” national coastal waters, it said.
