Via Friday-Lunch-Club
"Does a Christian Phalange leader in Lebanon know something that Israeli newspaper readers do not know?.....The unusual statements by Ja'ja, who is affiliated with the Christian-Sunni camp led by Prime Minister Saad Hariri, is only one of a series recently published in Lebanon that discuss a possible conflagration along the border with Israel.
His statements were published yesterday while a Saudi newspaper reported that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is due to arrive in Damascus for meetings with his Syrian counterpart, Bashar Assad, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and, Khaled Meshal. .....
So, what is happening on the northern border? Ahmadinejad warns of one scenario several days after U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones warns of an opposite likelihood. Iran, Jones argued, may try to divert international public opinion from the Obama administration's initiative to step up sanctions against it through an attack on Israel via Hezbollah or Hamas. Along with the Iranian connection, Hezbollah is also providing cause for heightened Israeli alertness. In his speech last week Nasrallah reiterated his view on the balance of terror. He claimed he will attack Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion International Airport in response to Israeli attacks on Beirut and Lebanon's civilian infrastructure.
A possible trigger to such confrontation, besides paranoia, is that Iran's encouraging its partners is linked to the delivery of arms. Israel believes, in retrospect, it failed when it did not focus its efforts on preventing the transfer of arms from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah following the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006. UN Security Council Resolution 1701 may have declared an arms embargo, but it was never enforced along the border between Lebanon and Syria.
GOC Northern Command Gadi Eizenkot recently said in a lecture at Tel Aviv University that the Israel Defense Forces' working assumption is that the advanced arms in the Syrian arsenal will also eventually make their way to Hezbollah. ..."
Uprooted Palestinian
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