Hizbullah Moves Into ‘Every Town’ In South Lebanon
(J-Post)
Hizbullah is bolstering its presence in south Lebanon villages with non-Shi’ite majorities by buying land and using it to build military positions and store missiles and launchers, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The decision to build infrastructure in non-Shi’ite villages - where Hizbullah has less support - is part of the group’s post-war strategy under which it has mostly abandoned the “nature reserves,” forested areas in southern Lebanon where it kept most of its Katyusha rocket launchers before the Second Lebanon War.
Behind the change is the mandate given to UNIFIL by the United Nations after the war in 2006. According to the mandate, the peacekeeping force can patrol freely throughout southern Lebanon but cannot enter villages or cities without being accompanied by soldiers from the Lebanese Armed Forces, which regularly tips off Hizbullah ahead of the raids.
News of the change in Hizbullah strategy came as Israel is trying to persuade the UN to strengthen UNIFIL’s mandate to give it the right to patrol the villages freely.
“Hizbullah is moving into every town that it can,” a senior defense official told the Post. “This is in order to evade UNIFIL detection.”
On Thursday, Lebanese complained they were receiving recorded phone messages from Israel promising “harsh retaliation” for any future Hizbullah attack. The automated messages also warn against allowing Hizbullah to form “a state within a state” in the country.
The phone messages end with the words: “The State of Israel.”
There was no immediate confirmation from Israel, though similar reports surfaced of Israeli phone campaigns during the 2006 war trying to persuade Lebanese not to support Hizbullah.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said residents in the country’s south and east, as well as in Beirut reporting receiving the calls. It said Telecommunications Minister Jibran Bassil contacted the United Nations to complain, calling it a “flagrant aggression against Lebanese sovereignty.”
Also Thursday, defense officials warned that with the prisoner swap completed, Hizbullah would no longer need to restrain itself and might decide to avenge the assassination of the group’s operations chief, Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed by a car bomb in Damascus last February.
As a result, the IDF has slightly increased its level of alert along the border, based on the assessment that even if a retaliatory attack took place abroad the violence would spread to the Israeli-Lebanese border.
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Don’t you just love their Nazi salute?
July 19th, 2008 at 9:56 amLook at the scum who killed children with his Nazi salute.
July 19th, 2008 at 1:01 pmSo now they (the terrorist of course) are confirmed to be in every town in So. Lebanon. Good. Now it can be confirmed that there is a target in every town in So. Lebanon.
I’ve heard estimates as high as 40,000 missiles aimed at Israel from the towns and villages the U.N. is not allowed to patrol. And that Israel AGREED to the “U.N. mandate”.
July 19th, 2008 at 1:12 pmWTF?
The UN hates Israel as much as the muzzies of Hizbollah do. Envy, the deadliest of the seven sins.
July 19th, 2008 at 1:25 pmhttp://dailystrike.com/?p=32#more-32
July 19th, 2008 at 3:11 pmYou know what they now call the towns in southern Lebanon?
“A target-rich environment.”
July 19th, 2008 at 6:38 pmBrigitte Gabriel’s house was the first one destroyed in southern Lebanon in the mid-1970s by Shia Muslims who were in league with the PLO. In “Because They Hate,” Gabriel wrote: “A lot of Muslims poured in from other Muslim countries, such as Iran,…Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Jordan, Libya, Iraq, and Egypt. The Lebanese civil war was not between the Lebanese; it was a holy war declared on the Christians by the Muslims of the Middle East.”
“They started massacring the Christians in city after city. The Western media seldom reported these horrific events. Most of the press was located in West Beirut, controlled by the PLO and the Muslims. One of the most ghastly acts was the massacre in the Christian city of Damour, where thousands of Christians were slaughtered like sheep.”
One Christian city in Lebanon that was close to the border of Israel was facing imminent annihilation and asked the Israelis for assistance. “The Israelis were well aware of the nature of the threat that faced the Christians, and they were willing to help for both moral and strategic reasons. The Palestinians had been launching terror attacks and artillery and rocket barrages against Israel from southern Lebanon for almost ten years.”
Now it’s the 21st century, and “Hizbullah is moving into every [Lebanese] town that it can,” and possibly trying to form “a state within a state” (Jerusalem Post).
I wonder what the Lebanese media isn’t reporting this time.
July 19th, 2008 at 11:28 pmOld Sailor: “Don’t you just love their Nazi salute?”
There was a town in southern Lebanon in the 1970s that was comprised of Shia Muslims who were “staunch Communists.” They were the ones who first rained down Katyusha rockets on Brigitte Gabriel’s house.
July 19th, 2008 at 11:50 pm“The Lebanese civil war was not between the Lebanese; it was a holy war declared on the Christians by the Muslims of the Middle East.”
Billie, I wouldn’t put all my eggs in Gabriel’s basket, she is a lot of partisan discourse.
Now, what I understood through my lebanese friends reports, it was a “fraticide” war : people who used to be good neighbours, who used to play soccer altogether, wo used to attend the same schools… started to kill each others.
“La guerre civile éclate au Liban
13 avril 1975
Après l’assassinat d’un garde du corps du phalangiste Pierre Gemayel, les milices de ce dernier provoquent l’incident d’Aï Remmaneh : 27 palestiniens sont massacrés dans un bus. Déjà victime d’un climat de violence quasi-quotidienne, le Liban s’enfonce à partir de cette date dans la guerre civile. Crées par Gemayel en 1936, les Kataëb - phalanges armées maronites d’inspiration franquiste - s’opposent aux nationalistes et aux progressistes arabes. Le territoire se partagera rapidement entre les deux camps qui s’affrontent dans les rues et multiplient les massacres. L’Etat libanais, dont la crédibilité a été déjà affectée ces dernières années par des crises internes, n’est pas en mesure de réagir : une barrière est-ouest va alors s’ériger entre chrétiens et arabes.”
“Le climat de tension qui règne au Liban au milieu des années 70 s’explique par plusieurs facteurs. D’abord, des différends sur la division des pouvoirs politiques opposent la majorité musulmane à la minorité chrétienne. Ensuite, la détérioration de l’économie accentue le sentiment d’inégalité qui alimente le radicalisme chez les musulmans. Enfin, la présence de troupes palestiniennes dans le sud du pays, et leurs luttes avec l’armée israélienne, contribuent à créer une situation explosive qui dégénère en avril 1975 à la suite d’incidents armés entre milices chrétiennes et musulmans. Le gouvernement est vite débordé et le conflit se répand dans tout le pays, faisant des dizaines de milliers de morts. La capitale, Beyrouth, devient un champ de bataille où les différentes factions croisent le fer. L’intervention de la Ligue arabe, particulièrement de l’armée syrienne, contribuera à une certaine accalmie en 1976. En dépit de nombreux cessez-le-feu, le Liban restera néanmoins en proie à des déchirements profonds qui se poursuivront encore au cours des années 80″
I understood that a country had interests to ignify the quarrels between the different tribes, wether christian marronites, arab christians, arab sunni, arab shia… SYRIA
July 20th, 2008 at 4:50 am