Israel's Defense Minister: Hizbullah-Global Jihad 'Civil War' Raging in Lebanon
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon has said "civil war" was raging in Lebanon between Hizbullah and Global Jihad members who have attempted to drag Israel into the conflict.
"To those who are not yet aware, there is already a civil war in Lebanon. Global Jihad, which has infiltrated Lebanon and is attacking Hizbullah, is blowing up car bombs in Dahieh and is firing rockets at Dahieh and the Bekaa Valley," Yaalon said Thursday in reference to recent attacks on Hizbullah's strongholds.
He said that the same elements were behind recent rocket attacks on northern Israel in August.
They intended to elicit an Israeli response against Hizbullah, Yaalon said. But stressed that the Shiite party was quick to deny it was involved in the attacks.
He claimed Iran poses the greatest threat to Israel by arming proxies such as Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
"We are certainly talking about a regime with ambitions of world hegemony, and therefore we say that an unconventional regime such as this … must absolutely not have unconventional weapons, in this case nuclear weapons," Yaalon said.
Meanwhile, Maj.-Gen. Noam Tibon, the commander of the Israeli Army's Northern Corps, said elite Hizbullah fighters are leading the Syrian regime's battle against rebels in the country’s hotspots.
“We must understand that this is not a war in Syria where Syrians are fighting against Syrians anymore,” Tibon said at The Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference in Herzliya.
Hizbullah is the “elite force today fighting against the rebels in Syria,” he said.
The party is “fighting in the most dangerous and tough areas in Syria and actually leading the struggle,” he added.
Locally, Hizbullah is fighting a sectarian war in Lebanon and preparing for a possible conflict with Israel, Tibon warned.
Hizbullah has more than 100,000 rockets aimed at Israel, which represents a new kind of terrorism facing the Jewish state, he said.
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