Warning to Syria
New Hizbullah tactics forced Israel to make a hidden threat to Syria
Alex Fishman
Israeli intelligence was shocked to discover that arms were still flowing across the Syria-Lebanon border. Why would Syria want to be involved in this conflict? And Hizbullah has been stockpiling huge quantities of arms for years. Why do they need this fresh supply?
Turns out that Hizbullah is looking for any way they can to throw off Israel's attempts to strike a blow to Hibzullah's ability to fire missiles. They were shocked to discover how much information Israel has about their weapons storehouses.
When the organization recovered from the initial blow, they began looking for ways to deal with Israel's aerial pursuit of their launchers. In this context, they have started over the last few days to launch huge assaults at one time, rather than "drip" missiles all day long.
Cat and mouse
They believe exposing a large quantity of launchers at one time forces the Israeli air force to respond with dozens of plans at one time over the skies of Lebanon in order to hunt them all down.
When the air force said the other day it was hunting six launchers, it was a worrying statistic. Hizbullah has hundreds of such launchers.
At the same time, Hizbullah is also trying not to reveal its storehouses. Organization higher-ups believe that when they bring rockets out of their hiding places, they expose the store rooms to the eyes of the IDF. Therefore, they prefer to get fresh ammunition from Syria, rather than expose their Lebanese warehouses.
As soon as Israel figured out this new tactic, it started targeting trucks moving from Syria to Lebanon – not always on main roads.
IDF sources say the phenomenon has been going on a day or two, and they believe it stems from Hizbullah's lack of long-range missiles. They say that as of this writing Israel has been hit by 60-70 such rockets, and their storehouses are hidden.
Israeli sources believe that Syria doesn't really want to get involved with this clash, but that the transfer of ammunition is beyond Syria's capacity to control. They believe many higher-ups in the Syrian hierarchy are upset about the phenomenon.
Syria's department of defense put the armed forces on alert last weekend. They are worried that Israeli officials aren't telling the truth when they say there are no plans to attack Syria.
The emphasis Israel placed Tuesday on the trucks carrying weapons from Syria to Lebanon are a warning to Syria: Control your country.
posted by jone @ 13:55
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