Hezbollah's Arsenal Described in U.N. Report

November 1, 2007
The New York Sun 
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/65670

United Nations -- Israel views Hezbollah, whose cache of missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and beyond is growing, as a strategic threat in violation of the U.N. Security Council resolution meant to ensure that the terrorist organization disarmed after last year's war in Lebanon, according to a new report by Secretary-General Ban.
Mr. Ban's periodic report to the council on the implementation of Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, provides unchallenged Israeli descriptions of Hezbollah's strength. This increased threat is despite the presence of the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, which grew after the war to 14,000 troops, many of them from European countries, in an attempt to prevent renewed fighting along the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Released yesterday, the report for the first time puts the onus on Syria and Lebanon, not Israel, to delineate the border in the area known as Shebaa Farms. Mr. Ban completed the report after a meeting last week with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who reminded the secretary-general that in 2000 the United Nations certified that Israel had withdrawn completely from Lebanon.
Israel alleges that Hezbollah has placed new rocket supplies, including hundreds of Zilzal and Fajr generation rockets with a range of 150 miles, enabling them to reach Tel Aviv and points further south, the report says. It adds that Hezbollah has tripled its shore-to-sea C-802 missiles and has established an air defense unit armed with ground-to-air missiles.
The report emphasizes that according to Israeli intelligence, this arsenal is largely situated north of the Litani River, outside UNIFIL's jurisdiction. Although the council demanded that no Lebanese militias should possess any weapons, Israel has stated that the nature and number of weapons in Hezbollah's control constitutes a strategic threat to its security and the safety of its citizens, Mr. Ban reports.
Israel, according to the report, has not provided UNIFIL with specific intelligence due to the sensitivity of its sources in Lebanon. But far from refuting it, the report says that several speeches made by Hezbollah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah in the past few months seem to confirm these Israeli claims.
As prime minister in 2000, Mr. Barak ordered the Israel Defense Force out of Lebanon, insisting that the United Nations certify the withdrawal as complete. In their meeting last Friday, Mr. Barak reminded Mr. Ban that the IDF at the time was forced to move fence posts by several feet to comply with border marks made by Mr. Ban's predecessor, Kofi Annan, and certified by the Security Council, of the so-called blue line.
Instead of disarming after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah and its political supporters claimed that an Israeli-held area around the town of Shebaa that was described in yesterday's report as characterized by poor soil and meager water resources and sparsely populated belonged to Lebanon, and not to Syria, as the United Nations has determined.
As Hezbollah's argument spread in the Arab world, Mr. Ban was urged to send a cartographer to define the so-called Shebaa Farms, and in yesterday's report he determines the area's borders for the first time. However, according to the report, it is up to Lebanon and Syria to make efforts to agree upon their common border.
Baath Party doctrine holds that Lebanon is part of greater Syria. To date, Damascus has defied the Security Council and declined to establish diplomatic relations with Beirut. Additionally, according to yesterday's report, Syria is yet to respond to Mr. Ban's request for its own records of jurisdiction over Shebaa.