By: Yahya Dabouq
Published Thursday, October 2, 2014
Fearing the infiltration of Hezbollah fighters across the border, Israeli settlers in the northern Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine are requesting arms and weaponry licenses.
Israeli media reports revealed an uptick in demands of weaponry by Israeli settlers, who are now purchasing arms and storing them in their houses.
Israel’s Walla news agency reported Wednesday that the “growing tension along Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon” in addition to recent voices suggesting the possibility of “Hezbollah invading settlements in any future conflict,” have prompted an uptick in settlers’ requests for arms and weapons licenses.
Moreover, the Israeli army instructed the Upper Galilee Regional Council authorities to distribute all types of armory weapons in storage to their crews to ensure their readiness to confront any possible future incursion. Similarly, Zarit and Ma’ale Yosef Regional Council villages in the Western Galilee dispersed weaponry among qualified security teams.
According to Walla, the community armory in storage at the Alonei Habashan Settlement in the Golan Heights, not far from Quneitra in Syria, nearly emptied out over the last two months after being distributed to settlers and put in close reach in their houses.
The increase can also be attributed to fears of possible attack tunnels from Lebanon, like in Gaza, and statements by a senior officer in the Israeli army that Hezbollah might carry out a threat to invade settlements in any future conflict.
Channel 10 News said Tuesday that Israeli settlers are hiring “a private excavations contractor to help them find what they fear may be such tunnels being dug by Hezbollah right beneath their feet.”
Back in September, The Jerusalem Post quoted an unidentified Israeli officer as saying that a future war with Lebanon's Hezbollah could see the resistance group cross the border in strength and seize Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory.
"Hezbollah's confidence is growing, along with its combat experience in Syria," it quoted the officer as saying.
"The battlegrounds of Syria have enabled Hezbollah to upgrade its capabilities. Hezbollah plans to send many combatants into Israeli territory near the border and seize it."
Other reports in September said that although another confrontation did not appear imminent, it was inevitable sooner or later.
Army spokesman Major Arye Shalicar told AFP that the military was prepared for any threat from Hezbollah.
"We are ready for any challenge. We are observing... what's going on," he said. "We are ready and it's not worth it for them, it's not worth them even trying it."
Shalicar said that since 2006 the resistance movement had reestablished itself in the frontier region.
"In more than 200 villages in south Lebanon, they've built up a lot of strength, with all kinds of weapons, all kinds of missiles of varying range," he said. "All of their money is flowing in various directions to an offensive capability which, among other things, includes about 100,000 rockets of various types, most of them from Iran and Syria.”
Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating war in 2006, which killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and some 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.
Since then, Israeli warplanes and spy drones continue to violate the Lebanese airspace on a daily basis, while Israeli soldiers routinely kidnap shepherds only to release them hours later.
In February Israeli warplanes attacked targets inside Lebanon for the first reported time since the 2006 conflict and Hezbollah vowed revenge.
Moreover, Israel has occupied Lebanon's Shebaa Farms region since 1967.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
(Al-Akhbar, AFP)
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