17-Aug-10: Right under the UN's noses

An uncommonly plain-spoken report from Associated Press says what Israelis have known for some time, and which is going to continue to be un-noticed and not acted upon by people outside of Israel until it's too late:

... Hezbollah is moving fighters and weapons into the villages of south Lebanon, building up a secret network of arms warehouses, bunkers and command posts in preparation for war. The Israeli military has begun releasing detailed information about what it calls Hezbollah's new border deployment, four years after a cross-border raid by its guerrillas triggered a 34-day war... Hezbollah, which is armed by Iran and Syria and is more powerful than the Lebanese military, stayed out of the Aug. 3 fight. But its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, threatened that he would intervene next time. He has also said that if war breaks out again his forces will fire rockets into Tel Aviv. Neither side has signaled that another war is imminent, but the Israelis' unusual openness about what they claim to know of Hezbollah's preparations seems to have two goals: to show the reach of their intelligence, and to stake their claim that if another war breaks out and many civilians die, it will be because Hezbollah placed its armaments and fighters in their midst. 
Israel's military says Hezbollah has changed strategy since the last war, moving most of its fighters and weapons from wooded rural areas into villages. It says the aim is to avoid detection and use to civilians for cover if war erupts. The military says all of this exists under the nose of 12,000 international peacekeepers who, by their own count, conduct up to 340 patrols a day in south Lebanon but are hobbled by a hostile population and rules preventing them from searching private property.

Reading the text of the infamous - but unanimous - UN Security Council Resolution 1701 of 2006, purportedly ending the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, feels now like the most cynical of bad jokes.

And as Israelis are only too aware, the threat in the south is no less active.

The IDF fired on two suspects Monday (says YNet) as they were busy planting an explosive device near the security fence intended to keep jihadists in place on the Gazan side and away from Israeli civilians and settlements. A soldier sustained shrapnel injuries when an already-planted explosive hidden near the fence went off. Israeli fire resulted in the death of one of the Gazan-Palestinian-Arab terrorists who, according to Haaretz, was Basem Da'ama (YNet has his name as Bassem Dragma.) This was an Islamic Jihad terrorist who took part in an exchange of fire during March 2010 that led to the deaths of IDF soldiers Eliraz Peretz and Ilan Sviatkovsky.