Hezbollah Leader Warns Israel Against Threatening SyriaThe chief of the Lebanese resistance guerilla group Hezbollah, or Party of God, has warned Israel against threatening Syria and vowed to continue fighting Israeli troops in the disputed Shebaa Farms.Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah, Sunday said that "Threatening to attack Syrian targets and launch war will not scare the Syrian leadership," prominent newspaper An Nahar reported Monday. Nasrallah's remarks came in response to Israeli officials' repeated warnings of holding Damascus accountable for support for Hezbollah and its attacks on Israeli forces. "If Israelis are betting on scaring Syrian President Bashar al- Assad, they are gambling and playing with fire," he said, adding that "as neither Syria nor its armed forces will accept insult or humiliation." In April, Israel destroyed a Syrian radar post in eastern Lebanon and killed three Syrian soldiers in retaliation for the killing of an Israeli soldier in Hezbollah attacks in the Shebaa Farms on the Syria-Lebanon-Israel borders. Syria deploys about 35, 000 troops in Lebanon. Nasrallah also vowed to drive Israeli troops out of the Shebaa Farms and predicted that the Jewish state would be forced to pull out of the area as it did from southern Lebanon last May. "We are running out of patience before the continued Israeli attacks on our national dignity. When we decide to punish the enemy for those crimes, no one should blame us," he said. Israel withdrew from south Lebanon last May 24, ending its 22- year occupation. However, the Iranian and Syrian-backed Hezbollah swears to continue fighting against Israel as long as it holds the Shebaa Farms captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War. Lebanon and Syria insist that the 200-square-kilometer farms belongs to Lebanon, while the U.N. and Israel regard it Syria's land and its fate should be decided within the Syrian-Israeli peace talks. |
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