Israel Matzav

Hezbullah's inevitable 'additional demand'

You could just see this coming. On Sunday, Israel's cabinet prostrated itself at the feet of Hezbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah by agreeing to all of his demands in exchange for the dead bodies of kidnapped IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. And on Monday, Nasrallah issued a new demand, with the inevitable threat that if it is not fulfilled he will once again go to war.

Hezbollah considers itself free to strike Israeli soldiers and civilians unless it receives maps of minefields and areas peppered with cluster bombs during the Second Lebanon War, a Lebanese journalist believed familiar with the Shi'ite group's thinking wrote in an article appearing Monday.

"This will be a sufficient reason for the resistance (Hezbollah) to carry out a thousand operations and to kill the enemy soldiers as it wishes, and perhaps its civilians, as long as the Israeli killing machine continues," Ibrahim al-Amin wrote in Monday editions of Al-Akhbar.

Al-Amin added that Hezbollah's arms build-up, which includes training of its gunmen and the development of its military infrastructure, will continue "without permission from anyone."

For those of you who thought that UN Security Council Resolution 1701 would prevent Hezbullah's arms build-up, maybe it's time for you to come out of your cave and admit that - like everything else in the Second Lebanon War - Olmert and Livni botched it.

But this time there's more.

Hezbollah is also planning a terrorist attack against an Israeli target as retribution for last year's killing of arch-terror mastermind Imad Mughniyeh, al-Amin wrote.

"We may see many things that can be portrayed as punishment, but there is one big event that nothing can prevent from happening," he said. "It will be on the scale of the crime (Mughniyeh killing)."

Al-Amin did not provide many details on Hezbollah's expected response, but it would be reasonable to assume it would take the form of an attack outside of Lebanese soil. The writer noted that Hezbollah faces practical and technical obstacles as well as intra-Lebanese political considerations that are delaying the execution of the attack.

Al-Amin said Hezbollah does not plan to publicly claim credit for the attack.

With the Olmert-Barak-Livni-Yishai government in power, this has to concern us all.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:00 PM