March 14: Hizbullah Seeking to Lure Israel into War
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's admission that the party was behind the drone that was shot down by Israel on Saturday is aimed at diverting attention away from the developments along the Lebanese-Syrian border, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Friday.
A leading March 14 source told the daily: “Hizbullah is seeking to lure Israel into a war against Lebanon.”
It said that the admission is reminiscent of Hizbullah's abduction of Israeli soldiers in 2006 in a cross-border raid that sparked that year's 33-day war in July.
“Hizbullah has shifted from a defense strategy to an offensive one, meaning it has eliminated the role of the national dialogue,” it continued.
“The party has also responded directly to President Michel Suleiman's vision of a defense strategy that he has reiterated several times and which calls for freezing Hizbullah's arms,” said the March 14 source.
“The president, who has recently been defending Lebanon's sovereignty, should deal with this threatening development in the same manner in which he deals with the Syrian violations against the country,” it remarked.
Suleiman had stated last week that the weapons of non-state actors will be eventually removed, “whether they belong to Hizbullah or the Salafist forces.”
The March 14 sources added that Hizbullah has “blatantly” violated United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 and the role of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon.
The source held Prime Minister Najib Miqati's government responsible for any Israeli retaliation or future war, demanding “its resignation and the formation of another that would provide Lebanon with the sufficient protection to stress the culture of peace instead that of war.”
“Lebanon has now been placed in the eye of the storm and the country should be placed under the United Nations' supervision in order to avert a war” with Syria or Israel, it noted.
Nasrallah on Thursday acknowledged that his group sent a sophisticated unmanned drone over Israel last week, saying the device was built by the Jewish state's arch-foe Iran.
His acknowledgment came shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed at Hizbullah and vowed to defend his country against further "threats."
On October 6, the Israeli air force jets shot down the unarmed drone over southern Israel's Negev desert after it entered the country's airspace from the Mediterranean Sea.
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