(New York Times) Isabel Kershner - The previous Beirut government, led by Saad Hariri, "never did anything against Hizbullah," said Prof. Eyal Zisser, an expert on Syria and Lebanon at Tel Aviv University. "So from Israel's perspective, it [a Hizbullah-backed government] is a semantic change." An Israeli official said, "We are concerned about Iranian domination of Lebanon through its proxy, Hizbullah." The idea of a Hizbullah-backed government raised all sorts of questions, he added, including that of Lebanon's commitment to UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended Israel's 2006 war against Hizbullah and underpins the four-year-old cease-fire. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser and now a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, has long argued that to win the next war, Israel has to fight not only against Hizbullah, but also against the infrastructure of its host, Lebanon. "If Hizbullah is behind the government, it will be much easier to explain to the international community why we must fight against the State of Lebanon."
2011-01-25 10:29:32Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive