Hezbollah Threatens Israel Over Syria Strikes
Hussein Malla/Associated Press
In a televised speech, Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, said the transfer of the weapons would be Syria’s “strategic response” to the airstrikes that hit the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday.
By ANNE BARNARD
Published: May 9, 2013
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The leader of Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group, escalated tensions with Israel on Thursday over the recent Israeli airstrikes near Damascus, suggesting that the Syrian government would respond by providing Hezbollah fighters with the same weapons that Israel wants to keep out of their hands.
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While the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, did not specify the type of arms, he said they were “unique weapons that it never had before” that would “change the balance” of power with Israel, which regards his group’s alliance with Syria and Iran as one of its most potent security threats.
In a televised speech, Mr. Nasrallah said the transfer of the weapons would be Syria’s “strategic response” to the airstrikes that hit the outskirts of Damascus on Sunday.
Israel has not publicly acknowledged responsibility for those strikes. But Israeli leaders have said they would take military action to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining “game changing” weapons like chemical arms, which Syria is believed to possess in large quantities, and sophisticated long-range missiles that could hit Israel from Hezbollah-controlled areas of southern Lebanon.
Analysts close to Hezbollah said they believed Mr. Nasrallah was referring in his speech to long-range missiles, not chemical munitions. But the Israelis have expressed growing concern about the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war, suggesting that the transfer of such weapons to groups hostile to Israel was more and more likely.
The Israeli airstrikes last Sunday heightened fears that Syria’s war could lead to a regional conflagration.
Syrian officials said Thursday that they would respond forcefully to any future Israeli attacks and that they were planning to retaliate for Sunday’s strikes, possibly by authorizing Syria-based militant groups to attack in the Golan Heights, the disputed border region captured by Israel from Syria in the 1967 war.
Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, said in an interview with Agence France-Presse in Damascus that any new Israeli attack would bring a “harsh and painful” response from Syria’s military.
“Instructions were given to respond immediately to any Israeli attack,” he said in the interview, which was also published on the Web site of Press TV, an Iranian satellite channel. “Syria will not allow this to be repeated.”
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria told recent visitors to Damascus that his government had decided to give Hezbollah “everything,” according to an article in the Lebanese pro-Hezbollah newspaper Al-Akhbar. He also said that Syria plans to become “a resistance country” and take a more active role in opposing Israel.
Syria has long positioned itself as the champion of the Palestinian cause and as Israel’s greatest Arab foe, but since 1973 it has rarely clashed militarily with Israel.
The Israeli government did not respond to the assertions by Mr. Assad or Mr. Nasrallah. But Israeli analysts said they did not doubt that Mr. Assad’s forces and Hezbollah, which Israel considers a terrorist organization, would be drawing closer militarily, and that weapons transfers were possible.
“I’m afraid that both sides are serious in what they are saying and this is a recipe for direct confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah,” said Boaz Ganor, a counterterrorism expert at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.
The escalating tensions came as the United States was seeking to exert more diplomacy in conjunction with Russia, Syria’s most powerful foreign supporter, aimed at starting negotiations to settle the Syrian conflict.
Secretary of State John Kerry, asked about intelligence reports that Russia was completing a sale of surface-to-air missiles to Syria, told reporters while on a visit to Rome that the focus should be on the Russian-American agreement to convene peace talks as soon as possible.
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