Middle East Online 04 Ottobre 2008

Israel says to bring ‘enormous destruction’ on Lebanon villages if war with Hezbollah breaks out
 
TEL AVIV - A senior Israeli military commander said on Friday that any Hezbollah strike would bring "enormous destruction" on Lebanon that would exceed that caused by the 2006 war, without elaborating why would Hezbollah initiate a strike in the first place.

"What happened in Beirut in 2006 will occur in every village that fires on Israel," Major General Gadi Eisenkot, the top commander in northern Israel, said in an interview with Israel's mass-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

"Firing from the villages of Lebanon would cause a disaster, and (Hezbollah chief Hassan) Nasrallah has an interest in thinking 30 times before giving such an order," he added.

"We will use disproportionate force against these villages and cause enormous destruction because from our point of view these are not villages but military bases."

He added that the policy of massive retaliation would be employed against other regional foes should they carry out a first strike on Israel, saying "what applies to Hezbollah applies even more to Syria."

Israel waged a bloody 34-day war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 after Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid that aimed to free Lebanese soldiers from Israeli prisons. The bodies of the soldiers were returned in a prisoner swap earlier this year.

The war claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.

Source >  Middle East Online | oct 03