Nov 13,2007
By The Associated Press
The leader of the militant Hezbollah group said Sunday that the Israel Defense Forces' recent military exercises near the Lebanese border were intended to prepare for a new war on Lebanon.
"The enemy has been conducting military maneuvers for months. The latest maneuvers occurred a few weeks ago near the Lebanese border in which 50,000 Israeli officers and soldiers participated," Hassan Nasrallah told a Hezbollah rally in south Beirut. "These maneuvers are to prepare for an attack on Lebanon," he said.
He said Hezbollah's military maneuvers in southern Lebanon last week were carried out in response to the IDF drills and were designed to send out a clear message to Israel that his fighters were ready to defend Lebanon if it was attacked again by Israel.
"I tell the [Israeli] enemy that these maneuvers were real, serious and big. I am not going to give details. There is a great deal of readiness [by Hezbollah] which the enemy must understand," Nasrallah said in his speech Sunday.
"These maneuvers were intended to send out a clear message to the world which is besieging us and to this enemy that that the resistance in Lebanon possesses determination, men and the necessary and sufficient weapons to defend Lebanon," the black-turbaned cleric said, drawing cheers from the crowd.
Without elaborating, he added, "The resistance is ready to make a victory for Lebanon that will change the region's face."
The rally, attended by several thousand Hezbollah supporters waving the group's yellow banners and the Lebanese flag, was organized by the group to mark Lebanon's Martyr's Day.
Hezbollah's deputy leader Sheikh Naeem Kassem last week confirmed that the group had staged its largest-ever military maneuver near the border with Israel, claiming that the exercise was intended as preparations to counter Israeli plans for war.
Kassem told the Israeli Arab newspaper Sawat al-Balad that the maneuvers were "large and important parts of our preparation so that we won't be surprised." It was the first interview of the kind given since the maneuvers were first reported.
The pro-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported last Monday that thousands of the group's guerrillas had staged the exercise near Israel's border in southern Lebanon, but Prime Minister Fuad Saniora later said the reported exercise was probably just a simulation.
Israel Air Force warplanes dropped flares over the southern Lebanon hours after Hezbollah officials confirmed the exercise.
Monday's report in marked the first time Hezbollah, with its highly secretive military wing, revealed such exercises through a close newspaper. The maneuvers, if confirmed, could pose a major challenge to a UN-brokered cease-fire that ended last year's war with Israel.
