Tair Falsieh gathering up the tails of blast media rumors
As if they had been waiting for some event, Israel initiated with the first news of the explosion Tair Falsieh to exploit it and put it in the context of breach of resolution 1701, and lodge a formal complaint against Lebanon in the UN Security Council, led in his news headlines Hebrew media, which aired a videotape allegedly Army occupation that «prove» that Hezbollah the means of escape from the combat scene. Quoted a delegate of Israel to the United Nations, Gbriila Shelef, complaint against Lebanon to the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, and the President of the Security Council. Claims Tel Aviv through the complaint, that the event is a «serious breach of resolution 1701», and to talk about «a second explosion of a weapons depot belonging to the Hezbollah in the past three months, and it proves that the organization maintains a weapon is illegal south of the Litani River, and build military infrastructure in the region ».
The following Shelef, in its letter, that Hezbollah «use villages inhabited by civilians for the storage of ammunition … In this way the (Hezbollah) have used residents as human shields ». He also pointed the finger at the Lebanese army, saying that the «parties in the army (Lebanese) turn a blind eye deliberately building up Hezbollah, renewed infrastructure in southern Lebanon», stressing that «the Lebanese government responsible for each event is located on the territory».
A spokesman for the Israeli army had been circulated the tape, which says that an Israeli drone image of the sky of Lebanon. The video shows a persons occupation they claim «Hizbollah militants in possession of the means of combat on the back of a truck in an attempt to smuggle them before the arrival of UNIFIL and the Lebanese army to the scene», with reference to the pictures are not clear. Continues to monitor the video trucks that came out of the scene. The Israeli military claims that it «went to another store in the village of Deir Qanun river».
In turn, accused the Israeli President Shimon Peres, Hezbollah as «exposes Lebanon at risk», and saw that Israel «re what was to be returned to Lebanon», and therefore they «are not a threat to Lebanon». The Peres, during a speech at the Galilee, that «there is no reason not to be peace between us, was in Lebanon could become a Switzerland of the Middle East, but Hezbollah is destroying Lebanon as Hamas, the Palestinian Authority Palmyra». And Perez expressed his confidence in «we will be victorious in the field of security and other areas as well».
According to Israeli media that the army of occupation, called UNIFIL forces to investigate the explosion, on the background as evidence that Hezbollah continues to smuggle weapons into southern Lebanon and hiding in the houses, contrary to Resolution 1701. And saw an Israeli military spokesman said the blast «a continuation of the explosion in the Armory in Khirbet peace», on 14 July.
The former chairman of the research division of Military Intelligence, Brigadier General Jacob Amidror reserve and saw that the “explosion Tair Falsieh enabling Israel to achieve political gains achieved if the international forces of the incident, and this is what will not be, because it will violate the Hezbollah point of resolution 1701, and this is precisely what Israel will want working on the show ». But he pointed out that the talk about the «active filter or store a weapon of bombing would weaken the party, is the word of exaggerated».
I tried some of the Israeli media suggest that there is a role for the Israeli security services in an explosion Tair Falsieh over the question of the fact causes, although the result of a technical error, or the work of the long arm of Israel.
Some Israeli media have suggested that there is a role for the Israeli security services in the blast
The “Ha’aretz” that “Israel is following developments in the preparedness of southern Lebanon since the explosion to make sure that Hezbollah will not try to ignite the front with Israel in the wake of the explosion.” The “Maariv” newspaper quoted a security sources said that “there are aerial photographs that show for a second bombing in the village in the wake of the first explosion, and that Hezbollah seeks to strengthen the offensive and defensive Mnzawmath in Lebanese villages.”
The field, according to correspondent “News” in the district of pictures (Amal Khalil) that the people of the village, who slept the night of the explosion to rumors talked about the killing of Jesus and his son, 3 others, and the house was destroyed by an explosion of an ammunition depot in the garage, woken by the White Btbakte erected without damage, as Jesus himself Touring the whole health of the journalists in front of his home, the future well-wishers on his recovery. The son, still since before the incident in Beirut, where he lives and teaches at the university, and found no trace “of the three men” alleged: What Every one is infected, one of the elements of civil defense, the result was suffocating smoke, fire, and is treated.
Surprising that seized people from inflating the media of the accident also appeared on the Lebanese army soldiers and members of the Italian contingent, who flocked in the morning, to impose the necessary measures, as many have expressed surprise at the limited damage that focused on the burning garage, which is an area of 4 square meters.

(Corrects identification of analyst in 16th paragraph in story published on Aug. 21; makes clear that SA-8s are used against fighter planes in 17th paragraph.)

Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) — In a Lebanese village 10 miles west of the Israeli border, black-capped Hezbollah militiamen stand guard in front of a suspected weapons cache.

Even though they are unarmed, their presence deters United Nations peacekeepers from approaching the house in Khirbet Silim, preventing the UN troops from fulfilling their mission, which is to stop Hezbollah from rearming.

“The UN can’t just come around here and go into people’s houses,” said Rassan Salim, a municipal official in the village and a Hezbollah militia member. “Our weapons are to defend Lebanon.”

Hezbollah’s efforts to stockpile arms became obvious on July 14 when weapons hidden in a house in the village blew up, according to officials from the UN Interim Force in Lebanon. Four days later, peacekeepers looking for arms tried to raid the house the militiamen now guard, about a kilometer from the one that exploded. Villagers stoned the soldiers, injuring 14, and blocked the incursion.

Hezbollah, which has the backing of Iran and Syria, is rebuilding its force in the south, undaunted by its loss in Lebanon’s June elections, in which a pro-U.S. coalition won a parliamentary majority. The peacekeepers’ stay in south Lebanon expires on Aug. 31 and the UN Security Council must decide whether to extend it without change or authorize them to impose the weapons ban by force even without the support of the Lebanese army.
Free of Hezbollah

The 12,000 UN soldiers were sent to Lebanon after a 2006 war with Israel that began when Hezbollah, which the U.S. and Israel consider a terrorist organization, captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

After the fighting ended, the Security Council passed a resolution prohibiting “weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state.” The peacekeepers were deployed to keep south Lebanon free of Hezbollah’s militia and arms, a role they have to perform with the cooperation of the Lebanese army.

The Lebanese military can’t disarm Hezbollah, said Elias Hanna, a former Lebanese army general and political science professor at Beirut’s Notre Dame University. “Half the army is Shiite and will not fight Shiites,” he said.

The military sat out the 2006 conflict. Prime Minister- designate Saad Hariri has said Hezbollah’s disarmament will be subject to a “national dialogue.”

40,000 Rockets

Timur Goksel, a former spokesman for the peacekeepers, said the problem is that the UN operates under passive rules that depend on the host country’s consent.

“In the south, Hezbollah, not the government of Lebanon, is the real host,” he said.

Israel is also violating the UN resolution with daily air surveillance flights over Lebanon, according to Andrea Tenenti, the peacekeepers’ spokesman.

Israeli Defense MinisterEhud Barak told Army Radio on Aug. 4 that Hezbollah has stockpiled more than 40,000 rockets and “if there is a conflict on our northern border, we will use all necessary force.”

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, appearing on a giant screen at a Beirut rally on Aug. 14, warned that the group would bomb Tel Aviv if Israel bombed the Lebanese capital.

In the 2006 war, Israel bombed Lebanon and sent in troops backed by tanks. Hezbollah struck back, firing 4,000 rockets across the border. More than 1,000 Lebanese, mostly civilians, died and 120 Israeli soldiers and 43 civilians were killed.

Deterrence

“War is probably inevitable, though no one can say when it might come,” said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, author of a forthcoming book, “The Iran Connection: The Alliance with Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas.”

“Hezbollah is busy trying to develop deterrence to an Israeli invasion,” she said.
Analysts in Beirut say Hezbollah is buttressing its defenses based on part-time village units supplemented by full- time militiamen who operate anti-tank weapons and inaccurate short-range rockets. The group is gathering Russian-made SA-8 radar guided anti-aircraft missiles that can shoot down fighter planes and has SA-18 shoulder-fired missiles that are used against helicopters, said Saad-Ghorayeb. Hezbollah plans to send commandoes into Israel and obtain long-range missiles to hit towns south of Haifa, she added.

“In the next war, Hezbollah will want to use counter- offensive methods,” she said. “Hezbollah is setting the bar high for itself.”

‘Invisible Means’

Hezbollah officials wouldn’t comment on specific weapons or tactics.

“Of course they are rearming,” said Shlomo Brom, a former director of strategic planning in the Israeli army. “We are also rearming.”

The Israeli army said it “tracks Hezbollah’s military build-up through both visible and invisible means and is ready to act at any point in time.”

Tenenti said the UN mission has succeeded: there is no fighting. He said it’s up to UN commanders to raid or not, in coordination with the Lebanese army. “We have not witnessed weapons being brought into the south,” he said.

He wouldn’t speculate whether arms had been smuggled in, or even say whether he’d heard of such a thing.

In 2006, Israeli troops didn’t reach Khirbet Silim, though it was shelled and bombed, residents say.

In the village and nearby, Hezbollah members said taking away their weapons is out of the question.

“This was never in doubt, never,” said Hossama Ramaan, 40, the Hezbollah mayor of Aadaisse, another border town.

Hezbollah’s Executive Council Chief Sayyed Hashem Safiyyeddine warned Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak that he will discover that the 2006 war on Lebanon was nothing but a simple vacation if the Israeli occupation army made the stupid mistake of attacking Lebanon again.

Speaking a ceremony in south Lebanon, Sayyed Safiyyeddine said: “We have never, and we will never seek war. However the rule that we’ve adopted to keep the war away from our country is that we have to be strong. Based on the fact that we are strong today and we have been living on the formula and the victory of the 2006 war, we believe that all of the Israeli threats are empty and meaningless. On the other hand, what is happening in the region and in Lebanon in particular, pertaining to the attempts to target the resistance and its position, it has been proven that of those schemes have fallen down…All of the United States’ political projects to curb the resistance and take vengeance on it have also fallen down and therefore, there is no need to be worried…For some political players in Lebanon who do not want to perceive this fat, this is their problem not the problem of most of the Lebanese who have reached a political agreement that can be founded on in order to pull Lebanon out of its problems and crises. The Lebanese must differentiate between their friend and their enemy and they have to know how to set their political priorities.”

BEIRUT — Love him or loathe him, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has earned himself celebrity status — at least on Facebook, where a good 20 forums are dedicated to the Lebanese Shiite militant leader.

Many are favourable to Nasrallah but others are extremely hostile to the controversial figure, whose organisation is claimed by Israel to have a stockpile of 40,000 rockets.

“May God bless you Nasrallah”, “Nasrallah deserves to burn in hell” and “God is with you, oh symbol of dignity and the resistance” are just some of the comments posted on forums dedicated to the charismatic 49-year-old, who has headed Hezbollah since 1992.

He has not appeared in public for over a year and resides in an undisclosed location in Beirut but his visibility on the social networking site could hardly be higher.

The Facebook groups have titles ranging from “Fans of Hassan Nasrallah” to “Support the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah,” and they are loaded with fervent comments in English, French, Hebrew, and Arabic, many from subscribers identifying themselves as Lebanese or Israelis.

In July 2006, Israel launched a devastating 34-day war against Hezbollah after the militant group kidnapped Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in a cross-border raid. Three years on, the “July War” remains a hot topic for the online forums.

A French-language forum entitled “For the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah,” demands the Israeli government get rid of Nasrallah “to avenge the blood of Ehud and Eldad,” whose remains Israel reclaimed in 2008 in a comprehensive prisoner swap with Hezbollah.

Visuals, too, send strong messages: some groups show a softer side of the Shiite leader, posting pictures of the child Nasrallah smiling in a garden by a bowl of fruit, or carrying a little girl in his arms. Others display cartoons of Nasrallah dressed in a bikini, portrayed as a cockroach or at the centre of a target.

– People are ‘free to express what they want’ –

————————————————-

Hezbollah maintains that people are “free to express what they want. If they want to express their love for Sayyed Nasrallah, the party will not forbid them to do that.”

The Lebanese themselves are divided on how they feel about Nasrallah.

For some Facebook members, the Hezbollah leader is “fighting to protect the fatherland against Americanisation, Zionism.”

“He is the cedar in our Lebanese flag, the master of all,” reads one post, in a reference to the symbolic tree of Lebanon.

But on a forum called “Hezbollah out of Lebanon right now!” members using screen names openly express their hostility towards the pro-Iranian group, which they say is “a major threat to Lebanon”.

Israelis, too, have much to say on Hezbollah, which is blacklisted as a terrorist group by the Jewish state and Washington though its political wing forms a bloc of 13 MPs in Lebanon’s 128-seat parliament following elections in June.

“Take the advice: Kick Nasrallah out and you can have living standards like we have in Israel,” writes one subscriber, who identifies himself as an Israeli soldier.

“Look, before 2006, Lebanon was booming,” writes Avi. “Your economy was good, many tourists came and so on. After 2006 Lebanon was wasteland because of Nasrallah.”

A rush of heated reactions flowed in moments after Avi’s post surfaced, accusing his country of having “destroyed Lebanon” and slamming Israel as Lebanon’s “first enemy”.

“Avi, shut up and find yourself a hole where you can hide! May God protect Nasrallah!” writes Nihal.

The 34-day July War killed some 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, and destroyed much of Lebanon’s major infrastructure.

Officials said the army has formulated a training course that would prepare combat troops to rapidly cross into Lebanon and overcome Hizbullah’s network of bunkers and tunnels south of the Litani River. They said the training was meant to significantly shorten any future war with Hizbullah. In 2006, Israel and Hizbullah agreed to a ceasefire after 34 days of combat.

“We were totally unprepared for the last war, and we took weeks learning on the job,” an official said. “This time, we intend to confront Hizbullah, knowing exactly its assets and capabilities.”

As Washington decides to extend sanctions on the Syrians charged with hampering Lebanese stability, Hezbollah accuses the Obama administration of ‘interfering’ in Beirut’s affairs.

“Hezbollah also sees the renewal of sanctions as a highly aggressive act and a continuation of the logic of imperial arrogance,” the resistance movement said in a statement on Saturday.

The sanctions were first imposed on August 1, 2007 by former US president George W. Bush, who froze the assets of Syrian individuals accused of undermining Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Hezbollah said the administration of the US President Barack Obama was following in the footsteps of its predecessors that provided a ‘cover for the crimes of the Israeli enemy’.

The movement further described the decision as a ‘blatant interference in Lebanese affairs’.

CAIRO (AP) — Hezbollah agents operating in Egypt were plotting to attack Israeli tourists at resorts in the Sinai Peninsula, Egyptian and Israeli officials said Sunday.

Egypt announced recently that a cell of 49 men with links to Hezbollah were planning attacks aimed at destabilizing the country. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, rejected the accusations but confirmed over the weekend that it had dispatched a member to Egypt — a rare acknowledgment that the Lebanese militant group was operating in another Arab country.

Egypt’s allegations were fresh evidence of the growing strains between the region’s staunch U.S. allies — namely Egypt and Saudi Arabia — and increasingly powerful Iranian- and Syrian-backed militant groups like Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.

On Sunday, Egyptian Cabinet minister Mufed Shehab said authorities seized explosive belts and other bomb-making materials from the agents and accused them of planning to buy a boat to “bring weapons and ammunition from Yemen, Sudan and Somalia and smuggle them into the country.”

The alleged agents also were “observing and locating the tourists groups who repeatedly come to south Sinai resorts and residences paving the way to target them in hostile activities,” Shehab told Egyptian parliament members in a reference to Israeli tourists who frequently travel to the Sinai for beach resort vacations.

Israel warned its citizens last week not to visit the Sinai desert because of new intelligence reports of militant plots to attack and kidnap Israelis there. An Israeli official told The Associated Press that the operatives specifically planned to target Israeli tourists in the Sinai. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press.

Israeli Cabinet Minister Yisrael Katz also told Army Radio on Sunday that Nasrallah had ordered his men to “hit Israeli targets.”

“He (Nasrallah) acknowledges that his men were involved in smuggling Iranian weapons into Gaza in order to hit Israel,” Katz said.

In a televised speech on Friday, Nasrallah, confirmed that Sami Shehab, one of the 49 and a senior Hezbollah member, was sent to Egypt to help militant Palestinian allies in the months before Israel’s three-week offensive in the neighboring Gaza Strip. Nasrallah said Shehab was arrested in November on charges of smuggling arms and equipment to Gaza via the strip’s Egyptian border — but he denied that Hezbollah was planning attacks in Egypt.

Tensions between Egypt and Hezbollah escalated earlier this year after Israel launched the offensive in Gaza, which killed 1,300 Palestinians in the coastal territory. Israel said the attack was aimed at stopping Palestinian militants from launching rockets from Gaza into Israel.

Many Arabs criticized Egypt — one of only two Arab countries with a peace deal with Israel — for not doing enough to stop the fighting and open its border with the Gaza Strip. Nasrallah had accused Egypt of “taking part in the crime” against Palestinians.

Egypt, a mostly Sunni Arab country, has long been at odds with the Shiite Hezbollah and its main backer, Iran. Egypt’s government had criticized Hezbollah for “provoking” its monthlong war with Israel in summer 2006.

But Hezbollah, along with its Palestinian ally, Hamas, have support among many regular Egyptians who praise the groups for not recognizing Israel and launching attacks against the Jewish state.

In Tehran, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani rejected accusations against Hezbollah, state television reported. Iran denies it gives weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas.

Hamas also denied the Egyptian allegations against Hezbollah, calling it a “cruel campaign.”

“Supplying arms to the Gaza Strip in support of resistance is not a charge — it is an honor,” Hamas said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press in Damascus, Syria.

News of the arrests of the alleged Hezbollah agents first broke last week when Egypt’s prosecutor-general said the men had rented apartments near the Israeli Embassy in Cairo and the Suez Canal, taught members how to make homemade bombs and were collecting intelligence from tourists sites in the Sinai, the Suez Canal and villages along Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip, which is run by Hamas.

Shehab, the Cabinet minister, said 25 of the 49 were in Egyptian custody and they included a Lebanese and several Egyptians and Palestinians.

Associated Press Writers Omar Sinan in Cairo; Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria; Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

BEIRUT, March 9 (Reuters) – Hezbollah expects Lebanon’s parliamentary election to produce a unity government that will be internationally recognised even if the Iran-backed group and its allies wins a majority.

Deputy leader Sheikh Naim Kassem also welcomed a review of policy towards Hezbollah by Britain, which says it is willing to talk to the political wing of a movement listed as a terrorist group by Washington.

“We welcome this British revision and perhaps there will be meetings in the coming days,” Kassem told Reuters in an interview. “There is no request for a meeting but we expect this to happen soon,” he said, adding that Hezbollah already had “wide contacts” with other European governments. [ID:nL4702156]

Hezbollah, a political movement with a powerful guerrilla army, has widespread support among Lebanon’s Shi’ite community — one of the largest religious groups in a country run according to a sectarian power-sharing system.

Its military arm is on Britain’s list of banned organisations, but Hezbollah itself makes no distiction between its political and military funcions.

The group heads a pro-Syria coalition that hopes to overturn the parliamentary majority held by an anti-Damascus alliance backed by many Arab and Western governments, including the United States.

Kassem forecast a narrow victory for Hezbollah and its allies, including Christian politician Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement, and said he expected the formation of another national unity government after the June 7 election.

“I expect that there will be a government of national unity, regardless of who is the loser or winner,” Kassem said. He said he had not the “slightest concern of a boycott” of the government were Hezbollah and its allies to win a majority.

Some of Hezbollah’s rivals have said Western states may shun the government if the group and its allies won the election, drawing on a precedent set by a boycott of Hamas after it won a Palestinian legislative election in 2006.

“We are meeting with delegates of European states and international institutions and they tell us clearly … that they will deal with whoever wins, even if the opposition wins,” Kassem said.

Majority leader Saad al-Hariri, a Sunni politician backed by Saudi Arabia, has rejected the idea of a post-election unity government. Some of his allies have not ruled out taking part.

The rival alliances have been sharing posts in a unity government since July under a deal brokered by Qatar to defuse a political conflict that took Lebanon to the brink of civil war.

DON’T “INVENT” PROBLEMS WITH IRAN

The political conflict in Lebanon has partly been fuelled by regional rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Syria. Ties between the countries hit a nadir after the 2005 assassination of Lebanese statesman Rafik al-Hariri.

Kassem said it was too early to see “wide effects” from a thaw in ties between Riyadh and Damascus “but we can detect a climate of political detente in Lebanon because of this rapprochement”.

Saudi Arabia is also concerned about Syria’s close ties to Iran, a Shi’ite Islamist state viewed with suspicion by Riyadh.

Kassem, whose group was founded with the help of Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon in 1982, said Arab states should not “invent a problem called Arab-Iranian relations”.

The United States, which has close ties with Arab countries including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, aimed to “instigate an Arab-Iranian problem for the benefit of Israel”, he added.

Hezbollah, which fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, saw little prospect of another conflict with Israel in the near term, Kassem said. “But in the distant future all things are possible,” he added.

With Benjamin Netanyahu set to lead a new government in Israel, Kassem also said he saw no chance of progress in any peace talks between Israel and Syria and the Palestinians. (Writing by Tom Perry)