Israel Matzav

Nasrallah claims Israel murdered Hariri, Hezbullah captured Israeli drone

Hezbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave a speech on Monday night in which, as expected, he blamed Israel for the murder of Lebanese President Rafik Hariri.

Nasrallah blamed Israel for first attempting to open a rift between the Sunni supporters of Hariri and the Shi'ite Hizbullah in 1993 by telling Hariri that Hizbullah was attempting to have him killed.

The Hizbullah head continued his story of Israeli duplicity, telling reporters that in 1996 Hizbullah forces arrested Ahmed Nasrallah (no relation) a Lebanese agent working for Israel who had contacted Hariri's security apparatus on Israel's orders telling them that he worked closely with Imad Mugniyeh, then head of Hizbullah's military wing, and that he had information regarding a Hizbullah plan to kill Hariri.

Hassan Nasrallah stated that the Lebanese security forces later freed the alleged Israeli agent who, he said, fled to Israel in 2000, where he remains until today.

Nasrallah played for journalists a video clip of the alleged agent confessing to working for Israel and attempting to warn Hariri about a Hizbullah assassination attempt.

"This is how the Israelis from the beginning placed into everyone's minds this conspiracy [that Hizbullah killed Hariri]," said Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah also claimed to have murdered 12 Israeli commandos in 1997:

Nasrallah also discussed at the press conference a 1997 incident in which 12 IDF naval commando soldiers were killed on a secret mission in Lebanon, saying "we set up a trap for them."

"We assumed that Israel was going to act. Our people waiting a few weeks, and on one of the nights, the commando soldiers came...and fell into the trap that we prepared," Nasrallah said. He presented photographs taken from an unarmed IAF aircraft, which Hizbullah recovered before attacking the commandos.

Israeli officials dismissed the speech before it was ever made.

"They are looking for a way out," an official in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office said a day before the address. "When they start casting for straws like this, it just shows the degree of pressure they are under."

"This is completely ridiculous and ... everyone knows it," the official told The Jerusalem Post newspaper.

But the JPost omits what may be the most important part of Nasrallah's speech. Nasrallah claimed more about that 1997 incident than the death of 12 Israeli soldiers (Hat Tip: Elder of Ziyon).

"The secret I want to reveal tonight is that before 1997, Hezbollah was able to catch an Israeli spy plane photographing South Lebanon and sending them to an Israeli operations center," Sayyed Nasrallah went on to say.

"Before 1997, the Resistance managed to capture the transmission of an MK drone and we managed to access this transmission which enabled us of capturing the images transmitted by the drone as the enemy's operation room was receiving them," Hezbollah Secretary General explained.

"The capturing of the MK drone images by the Resistance's operation room led to the foiling of the enemy's amphibious assault on Ansariyeh on September 5, 1997," Hezbollah Secretary General revealed, before showing details of the Ansariyeh operation and explaining how this tactic helped the Resistance fighters foil the Israeli attempt.

...

Hezbollah Secretary General then turned to the most sensitive part of the press conference: tangible proof showing the Israeli enemy carefully monitoring the movements of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and his locations.

In this regard, Sayyed Nasrallah unveiled footage intercepted from Israeli surveillance planes of the site of the 2005 murder of ex-Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri prior to his assassination.

"Israeli drones had carefully monitored the movements of Hariri's motorcade in Beirut and on the Farayya-Faqra road," Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out. "Was that a coincidence?" his eminence wondered. "Such footage generally comes as the first leg of the execution of an operation."

Several clips, each minutes long and undated, showed aerial views of the coastline off west Beirut on various days prior to the Hariri assassination. "Are there any Hezbollah offices in these areas monitored by Israel? Why is Israel monitoring these locations?" Sayyed Nasrallah wondered.

I can think of a lot of reasons why Israel might be monitoring those areas that may have little or nothing to do with Hezbullah. The idea that Israel killed Hariri is beyond ridiculous.

But the better question - as pointed out by Elder - is whether Hezbullah did capture the encryption code for transmissions from Israeli spy planes and whether those codes changed between 1997 and 2005. I believe the answer to that question is that the codes did change and that Nasrallah's undated videos are not from 2005. Israel's first unmanned aerial vehicle squadron, called the 200 squadron, was operated from Palmachim air base beginning in 1971.

The 200 squadron was established in 1971 to operate unmanned reconnaissance vehicles, the first of which were used in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The first aircraft of this squadron were remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs), which were replaced with upgraded, programmed autopilot aircraft known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in 1981. The first UAV was the IAI Scout (Zahavan), which was used in the 1982 Lebanon War. In 1992, the squadron began operating the IAI Searcher (Hugla), a new version of which was produced in 1998 and named the IAI Searcher Mk. II (Kochav Lavan). In 2005-2006 IAI Heron and Heron TP (Shoval and Eitan) added to the the squadron.

Another UAV squadron was established in 2003, 166 squadron. This caused the old IAI Scout (Zahavan) UAVs to begin phase out from active duty within the IAF.

The Ansariyeh incident did occur.

The Israelis' greatest blunder was the disastrous naval commando raid on the coastal village of Ansariyeh, 20 miles north of the zone, on 5 September in which 16 Israelis were killed in an ambush staged by Hizbollah guerrillas.

Although the objective of the raid remains unclear it was nonetheless a very risky undertaking, suggesting possible over-confidence in the IDF and the security cabinet which sanctioned the operation.

Israel Radio carried a rebuttal to Nasrallah's claims about the drones from an IDF General on Tuesday. Hmmm.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:18 PM