Steve Quayle News Alerts

July 23, 2002
By DAVID RUDGE

Hizbullah is reinforcing the positions it established on Israel's northern border following the IDF's withdrawal in May 2000, according to reports in the Lebanese press.

The English-language Beirut-based Daily Star reported on Sunday that in at least one position in the western sector of south Lebanon, trucks were seen bringing loads of earth which a mini-bulldozer was moving to create ramparts.

The position is beginning to resemble one of the hilltop bases once manned by the IDF and its South Lebanese Army allies in the former security zone in south Lebanon, the paper reported.

It quoted an UNIFIL officer from the Fijian battalion, which is preparing to pull out of the international peacekeeping force, as saying that Hizbullah is "hardening their posts in several places along the Blue Line."

The newspaper said it appears that the apparent transformation of Hizbullah from a fluid "guerrilla organization into a static paramilitary force continues."

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud continues to defend Hizbullah. At the conclusion of a visit to Cyprus, he said that everyone except Lebanon, its patron Syria, and Iran have got the facts about the organization wrong. He said that Hizbullah is a resistance organization.

Lahoud, who has been described by some Lebanese observers as a Syrian puppet, reportedly rejected US calls to curb Hizbullah. He said that "they are not terrorists, but facts of the resistance." Lahad said US pressure to blacklist Hizbullah as a terrorist organization is a result of a "Zionist campaign aimed at distorting facts and turning attention away from what is happening in the Palestinian territories."

He said that the situation along the border has been calm since the end of the Israeli occupation and that "tensions are only caused by Israeli incursions or provocation against members of the resistance."

Meanwhile, a senior Hizbullah official, Sheikh Muhammed Yazbek, has lambasted Annan's report to the Security Council which criticized the Lebanese government for not deploying troops in the south, as well as IAF flights over Lebanon.

"We express extreme amazement that Secretary-General Annan should go ahead and abide with Israel's desires," Yazbek, a member of Hizbullah's Shura (politburo) was quoted as saying on the organization's Al-Noor radio station.

"This is not the first time that Annan has adopted a hostile stance towards Lebanon. He is the one who insisted on reducing UNIFIL and expressed a vision to change its mandate in the future, and did not support Lebanon's claim that [Security Council] resolution 425 was not fully implemented."

"Add to this, turning this organization [UNIFIL] into an information-gathering tool for Israel... Many members of the international forces [UNIFIL] are spying for Israel and watching the resistance's movements, especially in the case of the three [kidnapped IDF] soldiers."

Yazbek described threats not to extend UNIFIL's mandate and calls on the Lebanese government to deploy its troops in the south as "submission" by the UN to American and Israeli demands.

"It is a new ploy by the international organization to deploy the [Lebanese] army along the borders to preserve security and put an end to Hizbullah's activities, which represent a threat to the Zionist entity," Yazbek was quoted as saying.

"Every day we hear that Hizbullah is deploying long-range rockets along the borders and as such Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and the whole country are at the mercy of Hizbullah's rockets..."

"They [Israelis] are in constant worry and anxiety, and we ask God that Hizbullah has indeed this gigantic power that can threaten Israel in depth," Yazbek said.

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