Israeli Photos of Hezbollah Sites

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

On 8 July 2010, Israel published aerial photographs of sites inside Lebanese villages, claiming they were sites for storing and launching Hezbollah rockets, and various media outlets circulated these photographs.

Opinions have multiplied over the reasons for publishing these photographs, foremost among them providing the world with pre-emptive justification for bombing Lebanese villages should war break out, and placing on Hezbollah the responsibility for killing Lebanese civilians. This may be so, even though the world has not lifted a finger over the repeated Israeli assaults on Lebanese, Palestinian, and Arab civilians in general. For a few days at a time, the world condemns the endangering of civilian lives and calls for restraint, but the bleeding of civilians never stops.

Through these photographs, Israel is targeting the Lebanese domestic front in particular. It wants to turn Hezbollah’s opponents against the weapon of resistance, to mobilize Lebanese public opinion against the Party, and it also seeks to instill terror in the hearts and minds of the Lebanese in more than a hundred villages in the south. It is as if it is saying that the Lebanese must not be allowed to enjoy civil peace, that tension must continually mark internal Lebanese relations, in the hope that it might turn into internal fighting and civil war, and that the people of the south must leave so as to become a burden on the Lebanese government.

Before 2006, Israel said again and again that Hezbollah stores its weapons inside villages and towns and uses people as human shields, thereby threatening the security of citizens, their property, and their lives. The war came, and we did not see rockets launched from residential areas, nor did we see fighters emerging from under the rubble or from alleys and squares. Despite this, the Zionists destroyed the villages over the heads of their own residents, and killed more than 1,200 Lebanese civilians.

Hezbollah employed a successful military tactic in 2006, and Israel fell into the trap of its own intelligence delusions; I do not think that Hezbollah has, in the years since, acquired the kind of stupidity depicted in these Israeli military photographs. Hezbollah has gained experience, and has learned lessons that call on it to review its plans and methods, particularly those exposed by the war, and it has certainly developed new plans that give Israel no pretext to strike civilians or demolish homes. Hezbollah is a scientific party, following a scientific methodology in its thinking, its methods, and its manner of execution; it is not an improvised, arbitrary, or chaotic party, nor a cowardly one that would shelter itself behind the blood of its own supporters and its own people.

In 2006, Israel bombed many sites it believed to be military, including open-bed trucks carrying water pipes, concrete mixers, and chimneys, while advancing on the ground even as rockets were being launched from behind its own advancing forces along certain axes. But no matter — if Israel wants to deceive itself once again about the accuracy of its intelligence in the coming war, so be it.

Hezbollah is distinguished by a lofty moral standard; it is a model for friend and foe alike on moral grounds, and casting doubt on the morality of Hezbollah’s military and security conduct will not achieve anything. I do not believe the people of Lebanon will lend an ear to these Israeli claims.

There are two points that were left out of these photographs: who said the Israeli air force will command the skies in the coming war, and that bombing Lebanese towns and villages will be a pleasant outing? And who said that striking Lebanese villages will grant immunity to Israeli towns?

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الصور الإسرائيلية لمواقع حزب الله” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.