27/05/2010 Although Israeli political and military officials have been mum since Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah set Tuesday the new maritime formula for any future war with Israel, some comments have surfaced in the Israeli media.
Haaretz said that ‘to avoid being deluded by the Israeli government many Israelis find themselves forced to accept Sayyed Nasrallah’s assessment that the home front exercise [Turning Point 4] was the fruit of Israel’s fear of Hezbollah’s rockets and that if Israel waged war on Lebanon, then Israeli ships and ports will become under attack.
“Perhaps the strategic thing for Israel is not to say- in this era of rockets and missiles - that geography is not of essence. Where would Gush Dan residents flee now? Will they swim their way out?” Ron Nehman, Ariel settlement mayor, told Israeli television.
The new formula that Sayyed Nasrallah set during his Resistance and Liberation Day speech on Tuesday stipulates that all occupied Palestine-bound ships along the 230km-Palestinian shoreline will be potential targets of Islamic Resistance rockets.
Sayyed Nasrallah’s new formula was in fact the latest in a series of equations that would govern any future war with Israel. In earlier speeches, the Hezbollah chief vowed to crush ground forces if they advanced into Lebanon and also warned that the Israeli Air Forces (IAF) will not be safe, though he never denied or confirmed possessing air defense systems. However Sayyed Nasrallah stressed the Islamic Resistance now has the ability to target any spot in occupied Palestine including military airports; so much for Israel’s ground and aerial supremacy.
“In any future war that you will wage on Lebanon, if you besiege our coastline and our ports, then every Israel-bound military, civilian, and commercial ship on the Mediterranean will be under the fire of the Islamic resistance,” Sayyed Nasrallah said.
“If we don’t have foresight and look seriously at the threats that we are facing and which we cannot delete, then we will never be ready, because the drill is supposed to be about getting ready for worst case scenarios,” Ya’ir Golan, the commander of the Israeli home front, told Israeli television.
The length of Palestine’s maritime façade is 230 kilometers, 224 of which are on the Mediterranean and the remaining six kilometers are on the Red Sea.
Israel had four ports:
- The Port of Haifa in the north. It was built in 1932 and it is used to transfer passengers and goods.
- The Port of Tel Aviv-Jaffa in the center. It was built in 1936 and will soon undergo reparation.
- The Port of Ashdod. It is the most important of all Israeli ports and its inauguration was the main reason for closing down the Port of Tel Aviv.
- The Port of Eilat. It is the only Israeli port on the Red Sea, located at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba. It was opened in 1957 for export purposes.
All of these ports contain naval bases and Israel’s submarine fleet is located in the Port of Haifa where most of the naval bases are located. They will be under Islamic Resistance fire in the next war.
“In 2006, when the Saar 5 vessel approached the missile was at a certain point and then it was taken to another location closer to the shore and it was fired and it actually hit the vessel,” Samir El-Khadem, Ret. Lebanese Admiral, told Al-Manar.
“These are the rockets that are available at the time being and the equation that was set on the Resistance and Liberation Day is rational and valid. The GPS can either be used to locate targets via satellite, or coordinates may be set so that the rocket would launch itself to the target and when it gets near it, its radar starts to function to determine the target and then it heads to it and explodes. Accuracy is between 80 to 90%,” he added.
Israeli media said that Israelis agree with Sayyed Nasrallah that the 2000 pullout and the catastrophic results of the ‘Second Lebanon War’ bore long term strategic repercussions in Hezbollah’s interest and that these two events have boosted its combat spirit not only among Hezbollah fighters but other enemies to Israel as well.
Ground forces, air forces, and naval forces will not have the freedom of movement in the next war. Hezbollah surprises have become the theme of every confrontation with the Israeli occupation, and what is yet to surface could be much worse for the Zionist entity than targeting Israel-bound ships in the Mediterranean. “I’m only talking about the Mediterranean. I haven’t yet spoken about the Red Sea...I haven’t yet spoken about the Red Sea,” Sayyed Nasrallah said.
Hasan Hijazi contributed to this report
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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