Tensions Between Israel And Hezbollah Are At A Boiling Point
ARMIN ROSEN
BusinessInsider.com
JAN. 19, 2015
The apparent Israeli strike inside of Syrian territory and near the Israeli-held Golan Heights on a group of commanders from Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist organization, raises the ante in a big way.
Sunday’s strike killed at least 6, including Mohammad Abu Issa, one of Hezbollah’s leading commanders in Syria and someone senior enough to have reportedly met Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad just a few weeks ago. The dead also included an Iranian general and Jihad Mugniyah, the 25-year-old son of Imad Mugniyah, Hezbollah’s longstanding operational mastermind.
The missiles fired from an Israeli helicopter in the Syrian province of Quneitra are the latest escalations along Israel’s northern frontier.
In October of 2014, Hezbollah set off an explosive device on the Israeli side of the country’s border with Lebanon, wounding two Israeli soldiers and taking credit for an attack on an Israeli target for only the second time since the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006. And last week, the group claimed to have purged an Israeli spy from its upper ranks: Mohammed Shawraba, the group’s head of external operations and the man in charge of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasralla’s security detail.
The precision of the latest strike implies that the Israelis have likely still penetrated Hezbollah, in spite of Shawraba’s discovery. And the attack is a continuation of a long-standing Israeli doctrine of striking outside the country’s borders to take down potential threats to national security. Israel has repeatedly struck inside Syria and Sudan to prevent weapons transfers to Hezbollah and Hamas; meanwhile, Jihad Mugniya’s father Imad was killed in what was likely an Israeli-plotted car bomb in Damascus in 2008.
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