Reveling in his roles as Israel’s top diplomat and security chief, Mr. Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of “committing a double war crime. It’s targeting Israeli civilians, while hiding behind Lebanese civilians.” Hezbollah, he said, was now using one-third of the houses in villages in southern Lebanon for its military purposes.
The Lebanese army had been “unwilling or unable or both to do anything” about the tunnels, he said, but that did not absolve Lebanon of culpability.
Mr. Netanyahu sounded skeptical about the chances of the Lebanese Army taking on Hezbollah. Instead, he said, it “very often cooperates with Hezbollah, it certainly doesn’t challenge Hezbollah and it often directs its weapons against us.”
At the United Nations Security Council session in New York, all members demanded adherence to Resolution 1701, but there was no indication they were prepared to take more muscular action for now. The ambassadors of Israel and Lebanon, who were invited to the session, used it to vent longstanding grievances with each other’s country.
Ambassador Amal Mudallali of Lebanon, who spoke first, said many Lebanese feared Israel’s actions were a “prelude to another aggression,” given the history of Israeli military interventions in southern Lebanon. Ms. Mudallali also denounced what she described as the one-sidedness of Israel’s complaint about Resolution 1701 violations, given what the Lebanese have called Israel’s frequent breaches of Lebanon’s sovereignty “by land, air and sea” in contravention of that resolution.
“Israel breaches Lebanon airspace daily,” she said. If Lebanon were to call for an emergency Security Council meeting over Israeli violations, she told the other ambassadors, “you would be here 24-7.”
Ambassador Danny Danon of Israel said the tunnels were obvious evidence of a Hezbollah plot to invade, and he complained that both the Lebanese military and Unifil had done nothing until the Israelis announced the discovery of the tunnels.
Source : Nytimes
