What Will Syria and Iran Do to Help Hizbollah? Later, Gator!
July 16, 2006
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
For immediate help, the answer to this question is To-da-loo Kangaroo, or After While, Crocodile, or See You Soon, Baboon, or See you Later, Alligator.
Syria and Iran are not going to attack Israel with American troops in Iraq and, quite frankly, they are just not ready at this time, but my guesstimate is that they could be ready at some point in time between 2008 and 2012. Whenever they are ready, the scenario you are now watching will be repeated, but with a dramatically different twist. Once again, for the fourth time, Israel will go into Lebanon to straighten out a new threat.
But on this occasion they will have a large Islamic army poised in northern Syria and Lebanon, ready and waiting to come south and join with the terrorist troublemakers, and Israel will be caught in a trap of cunning Persian design.
Begin Article 1 Excerpts from Jerusalem Post
Lebanon can be Shut Down for Years’
By Anir Mizroch, THE JERUSALEM POST
July 16, 2006
Lebanon can be “shut down for years, as long as necessary” a senior military official said
over the weekend. He added that the goals of the Israeli blockade of Lebanon were, on a tactical level, to make sure that no rockets could be supplied to Hizbullah, and strategically, to make the government in Beirut take responsibility for its southern border.
The official said the blockade could be maintained “for as long as is necessary to remove the threat of missiles on the State of Israel,” but acknowledged that diplomatic pressure might end it sooner.
Regarding the imminent arrival in
the region of a UN team to work on resolving the crisis, the military official said Israel would only work with the mediators if their paramount objectives were the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers and the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for Hizbullah to be disarmed and for the Lebanese Army to take control of its southern border.
The feeling within the IDF General Staff is that the Lebanese government will eventually succumb and deploy its army in the south, but that this decision will be made at the political level, under international pressure.
Halutz said Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah had gone “a step too far” in evaluating his organization’s power, and in forecasting Israel’s reaction. “Nasrallah had expected a different response from Israel, he had grown accustomed to a different response from Israel,” Halutz said. He said that there were already signs of criticism of Hizbullah by Lebanese parliamentarians.
Halutz said there was no sign that Syria and Iran would be dragged into the conflict, but added that those who acted against Israel would themselves be acted against. “I see no reason that the Syrians would want to jump into a pool they are liable to drown in,” he said, adding that the IDF has not seen any unusual Syrian military activity in recent days.
The official said the IDF was not acting against the Lebanese government but rather against Hizbullah’s infrastructure. However, the official warned the government in Beirut that “it had a lot to lose” if it did not deploy its forces in the south.
The official said Israel knew that Iran has given Hizbullah a “blank check” regarding weapons supplies and had promised to replenish anything destroyed by Israeli action.
Israel also knew that members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were active in Hizbullah’s rocket attacks, the official said, including the attack on Israel Navy Ship Hanit off the coast of Lebanon Friday.
The official said that so far, there had been no direct military clashes between the IDF and the Iranian forces in Lebanon.
The IDF has would continue to attack Hizbullah’s missile silos and mobile rocket launching pads in southern Lebanon, the official said, in a long overdue attempt to deal with the strategic threat along the northern border.
He said that by destroying roads and bridges throughout Lebanon, as well as disabling airports, the IDF hoped to prevent Iran and Syria from replenishing Hizbulah’s supply of rockets and launchers in the south.
Not one rocket will make it into Lebanon, the senior IDF official said over the weekend, adding that the Beirut-Damascus highway had been “shut down.” The IDF’s plan was to cut off Hizbullah’s supply line from Syria and Iran, preventing weapons-laden trucks, ships and aircraft from reaching Lebanon, he said. The army was unable to say how long it will take for things to “turn around” and for Hizbullah to start running out of rockets, he said.
Halutz said Hizbullah had missiles with a range of 70 km., “and perhaps a little more.” With that range, the rockets might be able to reach reach Hadera and Netanya. Halutz could not say how many missiles Hizbullah had with that range.
Estimates of the total number of missiles in Hizbullah’s possession in southern Lebanon range from 10,000 to 13,000. The army took into account the very likely possibility that Hizbullah would unleash its rocket arsenal on northern Israel when the IDF responded to the kidnapping by striking Hizbullah’s rocket infrastructure.
“They have enough rockets at this stage to continue firing at Israel,” Halutz said. “Hizbullah has taken on for itself the role of the defender of Lebanon, but in reality, it has become the destroyer of Lebanon,” he said.
Halutz said another reason roads and bridges in Lebanon had been hit was to make it harder for the kidnappers of IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev
to move them within Lebanon or to take theHm out of the country. He said that the latest information Israel had was that the three kidnapped soldiers [including Cpl. Gilad Shalit in Gaza] were alive and in a “reasonable” state of health.
Begin Article 2 Excerpts from Haaretz
Lebanon PM asks for UN Help to Deploy Army in South
By Amos Harel and yoav Stern, Hasretz Correspondents and Agencies
July 16, 2006
Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered the Israel Defense Forces Saturday night to step up the rate of attacks against Lebanon. His orders were issued close to the time when Lebanon’s Prime Minister Fouad Siniora made a national address and called for an immediate cease-fire.
Peretz said that the IDF must continue applying pressure on Hezbollah, giving them no room to breathe, and continue expanding its bombing raids elsewhere.
Hours after the order was made, the Israel Air Force indeed launched a wave of bombing raids on the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs early Sunday, Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV and witnesses said.
A total of some dozen loud explosions shook the capital, much of which was plunged in darkness after warplanes struck power stations and fuel depots feeding them.
The southern suburbs were repeatedly blasted by Israeli warplanes for most of Saturday, but the early Sunday raids were the heaviest since Israel launched its offensive Wednesday in retaliation to the capture of two IDF soldiers by Hezbollah guerillas.
The UN Security Council on Saturday again rejected pleas that it call for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon after the United States objected, diplomats said.
Washington argued in closed-door talks that the focus for Middle East diplomacy for now should be on the weekend summit in St. Petersburg of the Group
of Eight industrialized nations, council diplomats said.
The U.S. was the sole member of the 15-nation U.N. body to oppose
any council action at all at this time, they said.
“We would expect much more from the Security Council,” Lebanese Foreign Ministry official Nouhad Mahmoud told reporters after the council meeting, singling out the U.S. for blame.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora called Saturday for an immediate cease-fire with Israel, and asked for help in deploying the country’s army in the south, from where Hezbollah has for days pounded northern Israel with Katyusha rockets.
“We call for an immediate cease-fire backed by the United Nations,” said Siniora in an address to the nation.
“We call to broaden the state’s control over all of its territory, in cooperation with United Nations forces, in southern Lebanon.”
Siniora also called on Lebanon to “work to recover all Lebanese territories and exercising full sovereignty of the state over those territories,” Saniora said in a televised address to the nation.
His voice cracking with emotion, Saniora criticized Hezbollah without naming the group, saying Lebanon “cannot rise and get back on its feet if its government is the last to know.”
“The government alone has the legitimate right to decide on matters of peace and war because it represents the will of the Lebanese people,” he said.
He said the IDF assault, sparked by the Hezbollah abduction of two of its soldiers Wednesday, had devasted his country, and called for international aid.
The Lebanese army is about 70,000 strong, equipped with American, French and Russian weapons but virtually no air force.
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