Israel at War Watch: Syria Opposes UNIFIL Force Along Its Border

AP: Syria opposes U.N. forces on its border

Syria on Wednesday opposed deployment of an international force along its border to prevent arms shipments to Hezbollah, and Israel called the situation in Lebanon “explosive.” A cease-fire was further shaken by artillery shells and explosions that killed three Lebanese soldiers and an Israeli.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora asked the U.S. to help lift an Israeli blockade on his country’s coast and airport â€” something Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said would not happen until U.N. troops deployed along the Lebanon-Syria border to block the flow of weapons. Hezbollah’s vast arsenal of rockets and other weapons, much of which is believed to originate in Iran, reaches the guerrillas across the Syrian border.

What cease-fire?

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701 is a JOKE. Hezbollah is NOT dearmed. Hezbollah is rearming and now Syria is refusing any international UNIFIL force to patrol its borders to prevent in-bound arms to Hezbollah.

An Israeli girl walks next to a metal cut-out statue of a firing soldier, left, in an army post from the 1967 war at Mt. Bental in the Golan Heights, overlooking Syria, Monday, Aug. 21, 2006. Speaking hours after an Israeli Cabinet minister called for renewal of negotiations with Syria and said Israel should give back the Golan Heights in exchange for peace, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday ruled out a resumption of peace talks at this time, denouncing Damascus as the ‘single most aggressive member of the axis of evil.’ Israel accuses Syria, along with Iran, of arming and supporting Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas who fired nearly 4,000 rockets at Israel in the 34-day war that ended last week.

This is a LULL in the war against Hezbollah. Israel will have an opportunity to rearm and re-equip the IDF to better combat the asymmetric warfare and Iranian anti-tank missiles of Hezbollah.

European Union ambassadors and deputies met in Brussels, Belgium, to drum up volunteers for the force, but tentative pledges reached just 4,200 troops by Wednesday â€” far short of the 15,000 called for by the U.N. cease-fire resolution. Deployment was likely take weeks or months.

Meanwhile, Syria indicated it might impose a blockade of its own.

“They will close their borders for all traffic in the event that U.N. troops are deployed along the Lebanon-Syria border,” Finland’s foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja said after meeting his Syrian counterpart, Walid Moallem, in Helsinki. Finland holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

This cease-fire will NOT last much longer before full time hostilities resume.

Stay tuned…..

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