Report: Hizbullah Preparing Military Arsenal to Occupy Galilee
Hizbullah is preparing its military arsenal and fighters to launch an operation to occupy the Galilee area in Israel, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Thursday.
The party’s Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s on February 16 sent “military notification… declaring that preparations to occupy the Galilee is ongoing,” a source close to Hizbullah told the daily.
“Hizbullah began preparing after the 2006 war for any new confrontation with the enemy,” the source said.
Nasrallah called on the Resistance fighters in a speech on February 16 to stand ready to occupy the Galilee area should another war "be imposed on Lebanon," in a response to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s threats to invade Lebanon once again.
Al-Akhbar daily also reported that Nasrallah has warned that Tel Aviv will be the first target in any war Israel decides to launch against Lebanon.
Security sources told the daily that “the resistance leadership was secretly on high alert after receiving reports that Israel will probably launch a war on Lebanon.”
“Obtained information confirmed these reports, showing that it was supposed to take place in August, however, changes occurred at the last minute,” the source said.
Sources told al-Joumhouria that the “resistances’ military preparations are ongoing.”
According to information obtained by the daily, a delegation from Hizbullah military experts visited areas in Bekaa and the South to check on the resistances’ positions, while 727 fighters from Hizbullah finished their military training in Tehran.
“Israel will be surprised by attacks from within the Israeli towns via the Palestinian resistance cells,” sources told the daily.
They added that “the battles will be on the Israeli grounds; therefore targeting the Galilee is a definite option.”
The sources didn’t rule out Syria’s participation in the war “especially if the interior situation deteriorated further more.”
Iran’s Fars news Agency reported that Syrian President Bashar Assad has warned that he would “set fire" to the Middle East if foreign forces launched a military strike on his country and would ask for Hizbullah’s help to attack Israel.
The party, established nearly 30 years ago to confront Israel's occupation of south Lebanon, fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006.
Israel and Syria are technically at war, but their frontier had been calm since the war in 1973, when Israel repelled a Syrian assault to recapture the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
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