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Israel closely watching Ahmedinejad's visit to Lebanon

Iran Materials 14 October 2010 19:50 (UTC +04:00)
Israeli officials Thursday condemned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's trip to southern Lebanon's border with Israel, saying they were closely monitoring the visit, DPA reported
Israel closely watching Ahmedinejad's visit to Lebanon

Israeli officials Thursday condemned Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's trip to southern Lebanon's border with Israel, saying they were closely monitoring the visit, DPA reported

Israeli media were devoting extensive coverage to the visit to the area by the Iranian leader who has called for Israel's destruction.

"Ahmadinejad at a distance of one kilometre," the biggest-selling daily, Yediot Ahronot declared ominously.

Hezbollah's al-Manar television station reported from Lebanon that an Israeli drone was flying in Lebanese airspace. An Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv would not comment.

Israeli officials have slammed the trip as an "illustration" of Iran's attempts to dominate the region, and especially Lebanon - not least the south, the stronghold the radical Shiite Hezbollah movement, which Tehran backs.

"Iran's domination of Lebanon through its proxy Hezbollah has destroyed the chances of peace and turned Lebanon into an Iranian satellite and a centre of regional terror and instability," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman, Mark Regev, told the German Press Agency dpa.

"Ahmadinejad is coming to Lebanon as a landlord who is visiting his domain," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said.

"He is bringing with him a message of violence and extremism. That should cause great concern among all those who are interested in peace and stability in the Middle East," he told dpa.

Palmor accused the Iranian leader of acting as if Lebanon's border with Israel was his own.

"That shows his intent of confronting Israel from Lebanon," he alleged.

"The transformation of the country of the Cedar Revolution into a country at the service of the Ayatollahs is extremely regrettable."

Amos Gilad, a top Defence Ministry official, said the Israeli security establishment was following the situation, but the military said it did not raise its level of alert.

Gilad, the head of the ministry's political-security branch, called it a "tragedy" that Lebanon's leadership was allowing "a man who is not Arab and an extremist leader to destroy Lebanon from the inside."

Hezbollah, he blasted, was becoming "an entity which is eating Lebanon like cancer eats the body."

On Wednesday, a far-right Israeli opposition lawmaker even called on the Israeli government to assassinate Ahmadinejad, and to use his current visit to Lebanon as the opportunity to do so.

"On the eve of World War II, had there been a man who had succeeded in assassinating (Nazi German dictator Adolf) Hitler, he would have changed the course of history and for certain the course of the Jewish people," said Arieh Eldad, of the National Union, a small opposition party with four mandates in the 120-seat Knesset.

Israel regards Iran as its biggest existential threat. It has made preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear arsenal a top priority, not least because that would completely overturn the balance of power in, and make Iran dominate, the volatile region.

Over the past years speculation has been rife over whether Israel is preparing a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in case diplomatic pressure fails to persuade it to abandon its programme.

It regards Hezbollah, as well as Hamas in Gaza, as Iranian-sponsored proxies directly threatening its northern and southern borders.

According to the Israeli military, Hezbollah is currently estimated to have some 40,000 short-, medium- and long-range missiles, and about 20,000 guerilla fighters in southern Lebanon.

If the movement were to attack Israel and another war were to break out, it would be capable of firing some 600 missiles at Israel a day, including some 100 long-range ones that can reach the greater Tel Aviv area, Israeli commanders said in a July briefing, ahead of the fourth anniversary of the 2006 second Lebanon war.

During the July 12 - August 14 war, Hezbollah launched more than 4,000 rockets, reaching up to the northern Israeli port city of Haifa. Israel responded with massive bombardments and a ground invasion.

Some 1,200 Lebanese and 165 Israelis were killed.

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