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Hezbollah Reiterates Right to Resistance Against Israel
Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah on Tuesday reiterated that it has the "legitimate right" to launching resistance against Israel.
In a statement to react to a report released by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Hezbollah said that it has the "legitimate right to fighting against Israel because it is occupying Lebanese lands, detaining Lebanese people and infringing the Lebanese airspace."
In the report to the U.N. Security Council, Annan complained that Lebanese government is "reluctant" to deploy troops in the south, leaving the area under the control of Hezbollah guerrillas.
Cross-border attacks by Hezbollah, or Party of God, against Israeli troops were "a main source of concern" in the Middle East, Annan claimed, urging Lebanon to deploy troops along the border with Israel.
He also criticized Israeli warplanes' incursions into Lebanon's airspace.
Hezbollah counterattacked Annan's comment by saying that Israel is the "source of troubles," stressing that "we have the right to strike back to the continued invasion of Israel."
Hezbollah spearheaded the resistance against Israel before it withdrew from south Lebanon in May 2000 to end a 22-year occupation. But the guerrilla group says it will continue fighting against Israel as long as it occupies the Shebaa Farms, which Beirut and Damascus say belong to Lebanon.
Israel, however, insists that it captured the Shebaa Farms from Syria in the 1967 Middle East War and that the issue be resolved in its negotiations with Syria.
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