According to Walid Charara, a political analyst based in Beirut, the recent targeted attack by Israel on Hezbollah in Syria has now expanded the battle lines between Hezbollah and Israel.
"This action demonstrates that Israel is looking to expand the confrontation between itself and Hezbollah," he told Al Jazeera. "They used to hit the party in Lebanon; now it's doing so in Syria. You can say the front is now open from Naqoura to the Golan Heights and beyond.
"This is a direct attack on Hezbollah members in Syria, so Hezbollah will respond, but when and how, it will be a surprise."
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday warned Israel that it would have to close its airport and seaports in the event of a third Lebanon war, saying its rockets could strike every part of the country.
...“Israelis are saying in the media that they would have to close down Ben-Gurion airport and the Haifa port and yes, that’s true,” Nasrallah said, according to the Daily Star. “You should close all of your airports and your ports because there is no place on the land of occupied Palestine that the resistance’s rockets cannot reach,” he said.
Nasrallah said that Hezbollah's presence in southern Lebanon is strong, and that the group is prepared for a fight. "The deterrent power of our resistance is what is preventing war," he said.
Hezbollah has every weapon Israel can think of, party chief Hasan Nasrallah warned in excerpts of an interview with pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen satellite channel.
“The resistance in Lebanon has everything the enemy can imagine and not imagine,” Nasrallah told Al-Mayadeen’s Ghassan Bin Jeddo...“We have weapons of all types; whatever [weapons] comes to mind,” he added.
The Home Front Command has decided to shorten the warning time for Tel Aviv and Gush Dan residents against incoming missiles from two minutes to 90 seconds. The move comes largely due to Hezbollah and Hamas' improved missile launching capabilities.
In the past, The Israel Defense Forces were able to use sensors that would detect any incoming fire and missiles as well as the direction they were coming from.
The sensors would trigger a siren, giving Tel Aviv and Gush Dan residents a two-minute grace period to find shelter...However now, Hamas and Hezbollah can launch longer range missiles with heightened precision. They possess more missiles than ever before, concealed in buildings and underground bunkers.
Hezbollah officials and supporters said they were now sending a pointed message to Israel through their efforts to rebuild, repopulate and rearm the south.
“We are not sleeping,” said Ali Fayyad, a Hezbollah official and member of Parliament. “We are working.” He receives visitors every weekend in a family home in Taibe, the site of a deadly tank battle in 2006.
Four years later, Hezbollah appears to be, if not bristling for a fight with Israel, then coolly prepared for one. It seems to be calculating either that an aggressive military posture might deter another war, as its own officials and Lebanese analysts say, or that a conflict, should it come, would on balance fortify its domestic political standing.
According to Hassan Nasrallah, the group’s leader, Hezbollah has increased its missile stocks to 40,000, compared with 13,000 during the 2006 war; Israeli defense officials do not dispute the estimate. (In 2006, Hezbollah fired about 4,000 missiles.)
The pageant, co-run by the Trump Organization and NBC, decided that this year it would have the women participate in the Las Vegas photo session to promote the pageant...
"The contestants who compete at Miss Universe are diverse, as they represent more than 82 countries around the globe. Many of their cultures embrace nudity," said a pageant representative.
The contestants were allowed to choose how much skin they wanted to show.
But now, suddenly, the organization is again behaving in a way that evinces deep insecurity about the decorum of Shiite women.
Here's one example. Two months after Israel interdicted the Mavi Marmara, another aid flotilla is preparing to set sail toward the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory of Gaza. This Lebanese fleet, slated to depart in the coming weeks, is led by the Miriam, a vessel manned solely by females...Yet it turns out that not all Lebanese women are welcome on the cruise. In June, the Kuwaiti daily As Siyassa reported that the curvaceous Lebanese diva Haifa Wehbe—perhaps the most famous woman in all of Lebanon—tried to sign on, but was rebuffed by Hezbollah. Why? Apparently Hezbollah was concerned that Wehbe’s “immodest” attire would “harm the reputation of all the women participating in the trip.”
The militia's rejection of Wehbe was remarkable. Not only would her presence have raised the profile of the voyage, it would have dramatically increased the public relations cost to Israel if it again mishandled the boarding. Moreover, Wehbe—a Shiite Muslim from Hezbollah’s home turf in south Lebanon—is a strong supporter of the “resistance.” In 2006, she praised the militia for defending Lebanon from Israel; in 2008 she declared that she was “under the command” of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Even more distinctive is the recent campaign that the militia has launched to convince women to don the veil. Females in Dahiya, a Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut, haven’t been covering up in sufficient numbers for the resistance, so Hezbollah, via its youth advertising affiliate, the Islamic Cultural Knowledge Association, has launched a massive poster campaign targeting those who have yet to adopt the hijab. The ubiquitous bright orange posters—on overpasses and roadside billboards—all depict a faceless woman wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf, and a series of slogans urging the attire. One of the more popular placards reads, “Your Hijab my sister is more precious than my blood.” Yet another notes that the veil “[p]rotects the position of women.” Still a third describes hijab as the “[f]ortress of chastity,” an adage the sign attributes to the late Iranian theocrat Ayatollah Khomeini.
B’nai Brith Canada calls on Toronto police to investigate display of flags of all banned terrorist groups
TORONTO, March 18, 2009 – B’nai Brith Canada has called on
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair to expand its investigation into the display of
flags belonging to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a banned
terrorist group in Canada...“We commend the Toronto Police for launching an investigation into the display of the flag of the Tamil Tigers, a terrorist group outlawed in this country,” said Frank Dimant, Executive Vice President of B’nai Brith Canada. “However, there have been many other instances of flags of other banned terrorist entities, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, that have been in full public view at rallies, most recently early this year during the period of the Gaza conflict. The appearance of the Hamas and Hezbollah flags at public rallies has often been accompanied by chants of ‘Death to Jews’.
“We call on Chief Blair to expand his police investigation to include the display on our city streets of the Hamas and Hezbollah flags as well. We hope that other jurisdictions will also take similar action...
(IsraelNN.com) At least three Katyusha rockets hit northwestern Israel several minutes ago, east of Nahariya. The IDF has been on alert for rocket fire from Hizbullah and is investigating areas of Thursday morning's blasts.
Several people were lightly injured from scattered debris.
Hizbullah has smuggled from Syria three times more rockets than it possessed before the Second Lebanon War two years ago. Hizbullah has not taken responsibility for the rocket attacks, which may have been initiated by another terrorist group with the approval of Hizbullah.
A Katyusha barrage was fired at the Nahariya area in the Western Galilee Thursday morning. Police sappers received reports of three rocket hits.
Two people were wounded in the attack. The police ordered residents to remain close to fortified areas. The school day in the city has been cancelled.
Nawaf Musawi, head of international relations for Hizbullah, said on Monday said the Shi'ite terror organization believes that large strips of northern Israel - beyond the border published by the United Nations in 2000 - belong to Lebanon. Musawi spoke after a meeting with the Norwegian ambassador to Lebanon.
According to Hizbullah "foreign minister", "The Zionist terror organizations moved the border from that of 1920 to that of 1923, and Lebanon lost seven villages and twenty farms. One must be cautious before moving the border to the Blue Line, because then Lebanon will lose millions of square meters." Musawi's comments mark the first time in recent years that Hizbullah is echoing the claims of various Lebanese Shi'ite figures.
The Hezbollah-led Shiite opposition and the Lebanese government backed by the West and Saudi Arabia, reached an agreement on Wednesday to resolve an 18-month political crisis that has crippled the country and recently triggered the worst fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Television stations reported that the agreement, negotiated in five days of talks in Qatar, calls for the election of Gen. Michel Suleiman, the commander of Lebanon’s army, as president, the formation of cabinet in which Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran and Syria, and its allies will enjoy veto power and a new electoral law that will provide better representation in the country’s sectarian system of power-sharing.
The current crisis began last week when Mr. Siniora’s government — which unites large sections of the Sunni, Druse and Maronite communities — tried to shut down a telecommunications and surveillance network run by the militant group Hezbollah. That would have been a welcome reassertion of governmental authority, except that the government does not have the political and military clout to pull it off.
Hezbollah — which enjoys broad backing from the Shiites, Lebanon’s largest and poorest community, as well as Iran and Syria — fought back...The government, unfortunately, had little choice but to yield on the telecommunications issue. Flush with its military gains, Hezbollah may demand more than Mr. Siniora can grant without forfeiting all legitimacy. What is needed now is a compromise...to keep Hezbollah in line, the deal should be guaranteed by Iran and Syria.
...If Mr. Bush really wants to help Mr. Siniora he will need to talk with Hezbollah’s masters in Syria and Iran: about the risks they court by promoting instability in Lebanon and the rewards they might reap in return for a more constructive approach. Mr. Bush’s stubborn refusal to negotiate with either Syria or Iran has weakened American influence throughout the region.
The emergence of the jihadist organization Fatah al-Islam at the Nahr al-Bared camp appears to have resulted from a mix of Syrian plotting and internal factors. Its leader arrived in Lebanon last year, armed with plenty of cash, after being released from a Syrian jail. Most of his several hundred followers came not from the camp but from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Syria, and elsewhere, often via the jihad-field of Iraq, yet another consequence of the Iraq war. Camp residents resented the intrusion and largely disliked the newcomers' rigid puritanism, but according to many accounts, they also admired the fighters for their zeal and experience fighting in Iraq.
It was a matter of time before the mix of Lebanon's own tense internal situation and such pockets of jihadism would explode. At the time of writing it was not clear if the battle would strengthen or weaken the Siniora government. Initially it united Lebanese, including Hezbollah, which may agree with the Salafists' aim of liberating Palestine but knows they regard Shias as heretics, and prefers itself to "own" the Palestinian issue in Lebanon.
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