BINT JBEIL, Lebanon, 26 May 2005 — The head of Lebanon’s Shiite resistance movement Hezbollah said yesterday his fighters possessed more than 12,000 rockets they could use to hit northern Israel. “Some people think we have 12,000 rockets, Katyushas or other ones. I tell you, we have more than 12,000,” Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah told a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters in Bint-Jbeil, a Shiite town near the Israeli border.
“The whole of the north of occupied Palestine as well as its settlements, airports, fields and farms are within the firing range of the fighters of the Islamic resistance,” he said, referring to northern Israel. Katyushas have a range of around 10 kilometres.
Nasrallah’s speech was to mark the fifth anniversary of the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after more than 20 years of occupation, a pullout for which Hezbollah’s armed wing was widely credited in the country.
“The value of these rockets in our hands lies in the fact that the Zionists does not know their number or where they are kept. They are fighting a hidden force which can catch them off-guard at any time,” he said. Nasrallah warned Hezbollah would not allow its fighters to be disarmed in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1559 which calls for militias in Lebanon to be dismantled.
“If someone, anyone, thinks of disarming the resistance, we will fight them to the death,” he said. “We do not want to drag the region into a regional war. We want to protect our country and keep our arms,” he added, reiterating that Hezbollah was, however, prepared to discuss the issue on the domestic Lebanese front.
Meanwhile, as Lebanon geared up yesterday for its first elections since Syria’s withdrawal the leading Hariri bloc looked poised to take a landslide victory in Beirut. In the first phase of the vote Sunday, 51 candidates, including the son of slain former Premier Rafik Hariri, will compete for 19 seats in Beirut.
The voting will continue in the rest of the country on the following three Sundays ending on June 19. Voters will choose a 128-seat Parliament . Despite the pullout and the prevailing anti-Syrian sentiments, pro-Syrian candidates are still expected to be returned to Parliament, partly due to an outdated election law that was designed in 2000 to favour Syria’s allies in Lebanon.
