Video of Explosion in South #Lebanon at this hour, in town of Ayn Qana.
Early reports indicating gas station but now pointing to #Hezbollah weapons depot: pic.twitter.com/geE35SfOC8
— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) September 22, 2020
מקורות בישראל: הפיצוץ בעין קאנא הוא הפעולה הישראלית השנייה (לאחר נמל ביירות) ולא האחרונה, נגד מחסני הנשק של חזבאללה
مصادر في اسرائيل: تفجير عين قانا هو ثاني استهداف اسرائيلي (بعد مرفأ بيروت)، وليس الاخير، ضد مخازن اسلحة حزب الله
Israel’s new tactic of choice in its battle against Iran and Hezbollah appears to be the well-placed bomb (or drone attack). Over the past few months the Mossad, together with its MeK allies, has bombed a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. Last month, I reported here that the massive devastation caused by last month’s explosion at the Beirut port commenced with the bombing of a Hezbollah weapons storage depot for which the Mossad was likely responsible.
Today, there was a massive explosion at yet another Hezbollah weapons storage facility in southern Lebanon. My Israeli source, a government official, says that the latest attack was also initiated by Israel. He said: “”it was the second – but not last – operation in the series that began last month in Beirut, targeting Hezbollah’s arms depots.”
Lebanese media report that there were multiple Israeli over-flights of the area in the hours leading up to the attack. This would imply that the explosion was caused either by a drone assault or a warplane. The explosion at the port did not come from the air, but rather from a bomb planted in or near the arms cache. Reporting Israel’s involvement in today’s explosion is under Israeli military censorship.
The interests of my source in leaking this to me and mine in publishing it are far different. Israeli officials cannot at this point divulge their involvement due to censorship. But they’d love to take credit for this attack and put Hezbollah on notice about Israel’s “fearsome” deterrent capability.
That is not my interest: mine is to show that Israeli deterrence has no short, medium or long term impact on this conflict. If Israel destroys an arms cache or an enrichment plant, they will build a bigger and better one in a few months or years. The conflict will not only continue, it will become even more lethal. There are no military solutions to this conflict.
There may be elements in the Israeli or U.S. governments who believe that regime change is possible; or that Lebanon will somehow miraculously toss out Hezbollah and become the obedient vassal state Israel has always hoped for. But those are fever dreams of the neoconservative war hawk party.
In some sense, this is quite satisfactory for Israel’s right-wing leadership. They need security threats in order to frighten the public into voting for them. They need to show they are protecting the nation from the enemy, even if many more Israelis die during this period of Cold War than would if these disagreements were resolved peacefully.
If Israel did negotiate an end to hostilities with its frontline neighbors, then the fear amongst Israelis would evaporate. They could then turn their attention to some of the deeper inequities and domestic problems facing Israeli society. This would lift the shroud of the national security state which has enveloped Israel since its founding.
The breast-pounding nationalist rhetoric of the Likud would prove far less attractive to the Israeli voter. Though it’s doubtful voters would turn to the discredited pseudo-Left represented by Labor or even Meretz, they might be more open to the Left alternative offered by the Joint List. They might even, heaven forfend, prove open to transforming Israel into a single democratic state for all its citizens. When the bogeyman is no longer at the door, many things once unthinkable become quite thinkable. The former Soviet Union provided this. The toppling of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany proved this. The Northern Ireland pact proved this. It could happen there. Though certainly not under current conditions.
Yes… heaven forfend, the single state that this is but without the wall, equality, when the “other” is a brother, heaven forfend.
But the game is keeping power and keeping the people in a state of fear while then protecting them from the enemy…on and on.
If your ‘source’ is indeed a government official, isn’t he risking imprisonment? The new Prisoner X?
Isn’t Shabak aware by now that an Israeli government official is leaking highly classified information to Tikkun Olam?
BTW, It’s been 45 days since the Beirut explosion, yet there isn’t a scintilla of evidence that Israel bombed a Hezbollah arms depot. No video. No audio. No seismic evidence. Where are the bits of Hezbollah rockets from the depot? Where is the secret underground Hezbollah city under the port?
Waiting.
Another example from European history of an once unthinkable development that became reality. Germany and France waged bitter wars. 1870/‘71,1914/‘18 and 1940/‘45. They were sadly enemies. Today these two nations work closely together to foster European cooperation and shared views of the future.
NOT sadly but: deadly rivals and enemies
Can you please explain what beef do Lebanon has with israel?
Whatever excuse Hizbollah had to attack israel because we were in southern Lebanon has evaporated in 2000 when we withdrew.
@ Jeal R.:
OK, if Lebanon has no beef with Israel then they’ve both agreed on a border between them, right? Ah, that’s right, they haven’t. Israel occupies Shebaa Farms. Let me know when Israel announces it’s ready to return it to Lebanon. Then you can talk. If Lebanon has no beef with Israel then Israel holds no Lebanese prisoners in its jails, right? Ah that’s right, there are hundreds of them. When Israel frees those prisoners then you can talk. Not to mention the billions in damages and murdered civilians Israel has inflicted on Lebanon, plus the hundreds murdered during the Israeli bombings in the 1970s. I’d say a few billion in reparations would do the trick.
You are either a bad hasbarist or a disingenuous one. If you didn’t know about these major outstanding issues, then you are ignorant. If you did and omitted them purposely, then you are disingenuous. Which one is it?
Newsflash.
The United Nations certified that Shabba Farms is not Lebanese.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110622044631/http://domino.un.org/unispal.NSF/5ba47a5c6cef541b802563e000493b8c/97bad2289146f58a852568e9006d99bd
Hundreds of Lebanese prisoners?
Really?
I thought Israel and Lebanon had a final prisoner exchange back in 2008?
https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3748213,00.html
What year is this?
@ MA Wunsch: Well, I’ll make you a deal: Israel can either return it to Lebanon or Syria. You take your pick. Which one will it be?
If the UN believes it is Syrian then it would seem like Assad would jump at the chance to claim it. But strangely he hasn’t. I’ve never heard of a country awarded a strip of territory and refusing it. Could be that he too is prepared to call it Lebanese. BTW, all the farmers who owned land there are Lebanese and live in Lebanon. Israel has evicted them and prevented them from farming their land. Another neat little bit of ethnic cleansing.
There are many unresolved issues of Lebanese prisoners either still detained, or who disappeared while in Israeli custody. And Israel also holds the bodies of Lebanese it killed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_prisoners_in_Israel#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Lebanese%20paramilitary,but%20Israel%20denies%20holding%20them.&text=On%20July%2016%2C%202008%2C%20the,remains%20of%20Goldwasser%20and%20Regev.
“I’ve never heard of a country awarded a strip of territory and refusing it”
Please allow me to educate you – Halayib Triangle
This “proof” proves nothing. WHere does it say that one of the countries was offered the territory and refused it?
Here is a list of countries with territorial disputes. Do all of them have a large gorilla organization with 100,000s rockets at their neighbors?
Israel went into Lebanon b/c of attacks that came out of its territory. At that point Hezbollah made sense as resistance. Years later, when we withdrew, Hezbollah had no reason to keep its violent arm and you recite their poor excuse as if some land that never belong to them is a good excuse. impressive critical thinking.
The problem with the far-left is everything done by Israel is blackwashed and anything by it’s enemies is whitewashed.
@ Jeal R.: I’m always amused by hasbarists like you who presume to comment, analyze and criticize Hezbollah behavior pretending to do so from the Hezbollah pt of view. While Hezbollah and its actions may “make no sense” to you, that’s an indicaton of nothing. I wouldn’t expect you to understand virtually anything about Hezbollah, as you’ve amply proven.
Are you arguing that there’s a template that all “guerilla [note your spelling error] organizations” must follow to be proper guerilla organizations? Is Hezbollah not a guerilla organization because it doesn’t follow the imaginary rules you’ve established? Got news for you: they come in all shapes and sizes. They come poorly armed. They come bristling with weapons. It depends on circumstances, funding sources, whether they have powerful allies, etc.
Israel “went into” Lebanon based on a fraud. An ambassdor was shot and Sharon used this as an excuse to do what he intended to do anyway: invade Lebanon and expel the PLO.
You didn’t withdraw. As I mentioned, Israel still occupies Shebaa Farms. Oh and you don’t get to decide the territory “never belonged to them” any more than a settler gets to say that the Occupied Territories “never belonged to Palestinians.”
After multiple Israeli invasions of Lebanon over several decades you don’t understand why Hezbollah would feel the need to provide a defense against Israeli aggression?
Do not insult me by calling me an extremist in my own blog. I’ll ban you faster than your head can spin.
If Israel doesn’t want to receive the world’s opprobrium it has a very simple option: resolve the conflicts it causes by peaceful means and compromise to end them. As long as it doesn’t do that it will continue to get the criticism it deserves.
I have never whitewashed any Israeli enemy. Do I wish Hezbollah didn’t exist? Sure. Do I relish it attacking Israel with rockets or any other weapon? No. Do I relish seeing Israelis dead from either a terror attack or rocket attack? No.
But unlike you I understand there are antecedents to this actions: Israeli invasions, thousands of dead Lebanese as a result, terror assassinations, decades-long occupation of Lebanese territory. And repeated Israeli threats to bomb Lebanon back to the Stone Age. These are the cause and Hezbollah is the effect. Without the cause, there is no effect. With it, there is.
My purpose here is to counter the propaganda offered by your ilk. Your purpose is to white-wash Israel and I won’t permit you to do it. Tant pis, baby.
You are done in this thread. Do not comment further.
Mapping Shab’a Farms
https://www.tourolaw.edu/ILR/uploads/articles/STRAUSS_FINAL_FULL_TEXT.pdf
Sorry to go off topic Richard, but this is too good to miss:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-washington-post-netanyahu-brings-suitcases-of-laundry-for-u-s-government-to-clean-1.9181242