WASHINGTON — Hezbollah is presently receiving a "constant stream of armaments" from Syria, Iran and other foreign sources, senior Israeli officials said Tuesday, and the terror group is "preparing for violence" in an increasingly radicalized Middle East.
"They are getting all kinds of rockets, advanced anti-tank missiles, command-and-control systems, training, finance," an Israeli official said. Asked if the group has fully reconstituted back to where it was before the war in terms of military capability, the official said: "They are certainly on their way."
The official, a top-ranked officer in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and an accompanying aide briefed a handful of reporters on the condition the officials' names not be used.
While Hezbollah has been unable to return to, or rebuild, bunkers and other fortifications it was using before the start of last summer's Israeli-Hezbollah war, the Israeli official said the group maintains an "operational" presence along the Lebanese-Israeli border, and cited as evidence the IDF's discovery Monday of a "cluster of explosives" near the border on the Lebanese side.
Enabling Hezbollah's rearmament, the official said, is the "open border" Lebanon shares with Syria, and the lack of "real teeth for enforcement" in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718, which established a ceasefire in the Israeli-Hezbollah war last August.
At the same time, and in a similar way, the Israeli military officer said, foreign sources are providing Hamas with anti-tank missiles, high-trajectory rockets and missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and their launchers, explosive devices and automatic rifles.
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The official and the aide claimed the IDF has had "no operational activity whatsoever" in Gaza for the last three months, since an informal ceasefire was established between the Palestinians and the Israelis in that area, but that in the same time Hamas fighters have launched more than 100 Qassam rockets across the border aimed at Israeli civilian targets.
As further evidence of the problems originating in Gaza and its porous border with Egypt, the official pointed to the deadly homicide bombing on January 29 in Eilat, the first ever in the southern Israeli resort town, and said IDF officials "know for sure" the bomber came from Gaza.
The official was skeptical about Western plans to shore up the Fatah security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen.
"Every meeting we have on this subject always ends in the conclusion, 'Bolster Abu Mazen, bolster Abu Mazen' as if that will solve all the problems," the IDF official said. "He was in power two years ago [before Hamas came to power], wasn't he?" the official asked. "What did he do then?"
Well, I am glad that a relatively main stream news organization like Fox published this report. But there is nothing new here, at least for me. After all, what else would you expect? The world is asleep once again, while the new Nazis are arming themselves to the teeth. Eventually they will strike, and the world will once again say: "If only we paid attention, if only we stopped them before it was too late".
I am sorry, I can't shake this feeling of an impending doom.
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