Hezbollah Pledges to Defend Lebanon’s Sovereignty

BEIRUT, 22 January 2004 — A day after Israeli raids on south Lebanon, the Hezbollah yesterday appeared to rule out a military escalation, but warned it would react to any new Israeli violation of Lebanese sovereignty.

On the ground, Hezbollah fighters who are deployed along the volatile Lebanese-Israeli border kept a low profile as UN peacekeepers stepped up their patrols, correspondents in the region said.

“We will not accept that the aggressions continue without response. We are ready to respond with strength to any Israeli aggression,” warned Sheikh Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s deputy leader. But Kassem ruled out an escalation following the latest flare-up of violence following Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace on Monday that drew Hezbollah anti-aircraft fire and UN condemnation.

Hezbollah fighters later the same day destroyed an Israeli military bulldozer, which the United Nations later said had violated Lebanese territory, a charge denied by the Jewish state. An Israeli soldier was killed and another injured in the rocket attack that triggered air raids Tuesday on Hezbollah-controlled areas in southern Lebanon, but with no casualties reported.

“There was an Israeli violation and we struck. For us, the issue ends here. But if new aggressions deserve a response, we will act,” Kassem told the Hezbollah television station, Al-Manar. Kassem, whose group is backed by both Damascus and Tehran, declined to comment on the air strikes, but noted “there is no Israeli decision for a general escalation.”

On Monday’s attack on the bulldozer, Hezbollah MP Mohammed Raad said, “We carried out a daring action that proved the enemy’s margin of maneuver is not so large and that the extent of its reaction is limited.”

Hezbollah spokesman Sheikh Hassan Ezzedin accused Israel of “provocations.”

The strike on the bulldozer “was the result of the Israeli enemy’s insistence on constantly violating Lebanese sovereignty from the air, the sea and, now, from the ground,” he said.

“It was a new aggression and we could not but act. Since the start of 2004, there have been 50 violations” of Lebanese sovereignty, Ezzedin told the French-language daily L’Orient Le Jour. Israel also moved toward avoiding an escalation on its northern border.

Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner said the air raids were “a warning to Hezbollah, which should understand it cannot continue its attacks with impunity, and to Syria, which supports it while talking of peace...

“This was a measured response to a terrorist attack, while we do not want an armed escalation,” he said.

Syria and Hezbollah have been facing international pressures, mainly from the United States, which accuses them of sponsoring terrorism, a charge strongly rejected by the two parties.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Tuesday that Hezbollah had forced Israel to carry out the air strikes, the first in five months, and called on Syria to cease all support for the group.

At the same time, Powell called for Israel and Lebanon to “monitor their actions carefully” so as not to escalate tensions, while France urged both parties to “avoid provocations.”

However, Israeli artillery gunners fired 16 shells overnight in the Shebaa Farms, a mountainous disputed border region occupied by the Jewish state since 1967 and claimed by Lebanon, correspondents said. And an Israeli warplane yesterday broke the sound barrier over south Lebanon, police said.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, condemned the Israeli raids, which it said “put in danger the stability and security of the sensitive Middle East region”.