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Spy-Gadget War Rages between Hizbullah, Israel
(Daily Star-Lebanon) Nicholas Blanford - Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah's acknowledgment that three members of his group had been caught spying, two of them for the CIA, is the first time that the party has admitted in public that a Western intelligence organization has infiltrated its ranks. Marwan Faqih, the owner of a garage in Nabatieh who allegedly planted GPS tracking devices within vehicles of Hizbullah members, was potentially the closest Israel has come to penetrating the organization in recent years. In October 2009, Hizbullah detected a tap on its fiber-optic network near Houla. A team of Hizbullah technicians walked the line, checking the buried cable every few meters while being tailed by an Israeli UAV. Eventually, they discovered an interceptor hooked into the fiber-optic cable, a transmitter and a battery pack. The Israelis, realizing the device had been discovered, attempted to blow it up but only the transmitter was destroyed. The interceptor and battery pack were successfully blown up the following day. Since early 2010, some UNIFIL battalions have been picking up rocket launch signals on their ground radars. The radars show the source of fire inside Lebanon, track the trajectory and mark the impact point in Israel. Only there were no rocket launches. UNIFIL has been unable to determine whether Hizbullah has found a way to trick radars by transmitting false launch signals or whether the fake readings are a form of Israeli interference.