From ShiaChat, sourced to AP:
Hezbollah envoy: War on Israel to widen
By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press WriterMon Jul 24, 8:45 AM ET
Hezbollah's representative in Iran struck a defiant tone Monday, warning that his Islamic militant group plans to widen its attacks on Israel until "no place" is safe for Israelis.
Hossein Safiadeen also reinforced earlier threats by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to widen the scope of attacks, which have included unprecedented missile strikes deep into northern Israel.
"We are going to make Israel not safe for Israelis. There will be no place they are safe," Safiadeen told a conference that included the Tehran-based representative of the Palestinian group Hamas and the ambassadors from Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority.
"You will see a new Middle East in the way of Hezbollah and Islam, not in the way of Rice and Israel."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Beirut on Monday while en route to Israel. Rice met with Lebanese Prime Minister Faud Saniora about the surge in fighting along the southern border in the last two weeks.
Rice told him, "Thank you for your courage and steadfastness."
Safiadeen's comments reflected the deep opposition within Hezbollah to the efforts to broker a truce, including apparent attempts by Arab powers to pressure Syria into ending its support for Hezbollah, leaving Iran as the group's lone major backer.
Iran and Syria are the main sources of funds and equipment for Hezbollah, which was founded in the early 1980s and took inspiration from Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Syria said Sunday it was willing to work with the United States and others to press for an end to the worse Arab-Israel battles in 24 years — but set conditions that Israel is unlikely to accept. Those conditions include a broader regional peace initiative that would discuss the return of the Golan Heights, which was captured by Israel in 1967.
Arab powerhouses Egypt and Saudi Arabia also were pushing Syria to end its support for Hezbollah fighters, Arab diplomats in Cairo said.
Safiadeen told The Associated Press he "had no news" about Syria considering withdrawing its support for Hezbollah, which touched off the crisis July 12 with a cross-border raid that captured two Israeli soldiers.
"We will expand attacks," he said. "The people who came to Israel, (they) moved there to live, not to die. If we continue to attack, they will leave."
Israel claims Iran has supplied Hezbollah with long-range missiles, which have hit the port of Haifa and other places. Iran denies the charges but does not hide its high-level support for Hezbollah.
"This war will be remembered as the beginning of the end for Israel," Safiadeen said.
And the world bitches because Israel has to defend itself???
DEBKAfile: Middle East war rhetoric escalates sharply with Rice’s exit from region
July 25, 2006, 8:57 PM (GMT+02:00)
Not surprisingly, the most extreme statement came from Iran: A Middle East storm is brewing and will strike violently, said the radical Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “The use of force in Lebanon could trigger a hurricane.”
He spoke after Riyadh released an official statement from King Abdullah asserting: “If the peace option fails because of Israeli arrogance, there will be no option but a war in the region.” The Saudi king was uncharacteristically unrestrained in his speech after seeing the US secretary come and go without allaying the Lebanese crisis.
At around the same time as the statement from Riyadh, huge explosions struck Hizballah targets in South Beirut for the first time since US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice landed in the Middle East for talks in Beirut, Jerusalem and Ramallah. Israeli positions along the Lebanese border also came under heavy Hizballah mortar fire on Tuesday afternoon, coinciding with an Israeli air bombardment of Hizballah rocket sites in Tyre. The IDF began closing some strategic roads to the Lebanese border to civilian traffic.
Hopes had been entertained In Cairo and Riyadh that the visiting US secretary would voice some sort of reproof for Israel’s extensive military action in Lebanon and apply the brakes in her private talks with Ehud Olmert. Instead, no sooner had she departed when Israeli defense minister Amir Peretz announced that Israel is clearing a security zone in South Lebanon that will remain under IDF fire control unless a multinational force assumes responsibility.
Given the enormous, time-consuming difficulties facing the assembly of such a force, his statement was taken as the first avowal of Israel’s intentions beyond the military operation. The term “security zone” was uttered for the first time since the Hizballah attack of July 12 sparked the current crisis.
Privately, the pro-Western rulers in Riyadh, Cairo and Amman were cheering Israel’s offensive in the hope of its crippling the extremist Shiite Hizballah and dealing Tehran its comeuppance. But Peretz’s statement gave Arab rulers the pretext for ignoring the fact that Israel was defending itself against attack and reviving their age-old accusations of Israeli ambitions to seize Arab lands with American support.
It was rumored in Cairo that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak plans to visit Syrian president Bashar Asad in Damascus this week to discuss the Lebanese crisis.
Jul. 25, 2006 14:14 | Updated Jul. 25, 2006 21:01
IDF kills Hizbullah commander in Maroun al-Ras By YAAKOV KATZ
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153291993055&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
As fighting in Maroun al-Ras came to a close on Tuesday, IDF troops killed five Hizbullah gunmen, including the movement's regional commander.
Several IDF soldiers were lightly wounded in the clashes and were evacuated under fire.
Earlier, Brigadier General of Division 91, Commander Gal Hirsch, revealed that troops operating in Bint Jbeil discovered war rooms with eavesdropping and surveillance equipment made by Iran, being used by Hizbullah against Israel.
They also found large cache of weapons and communications devices.
The IDF claimed to have killed some 50 gunmen in the two Hizbullah strongholds over the last two days.
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Note to those who haven't follwed all [ :-) ] the posts today.
Allegra reported earlier that a Lebanese radio station reported that 25 Israeli soldiers had been killed in an ambush. Since it didn't appear in any other news sources most of us thought it was pure propaganda, but then there appeared a short note in an article on JPost web-site that a group of IDF soldiers had been ambushed in Maroun al-Ras and ahd to be evacuated under fire. The extent of the damages or the number of injured were unknown. For a long time that was all that was known about this incident, but now any fears can be laid to rest. As usual it was wishful thinking or pure propaganda by the Arabs.
Fitzcarraldo: Look for additions to the "holy martyrs" list!