Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah last week declared that the Iran-backed terror group would attack Israel in response to the December 4th killing of Haj Hassan Hilu Laqis, deepening concerns that the organization – which has seen its brand as an anti-Israel vanguard shattered by its role in the Syrian conflict – is seeking to provoke a conflict with the Jewish state in order to burnish its image:
“All the indicators and clues points to the Israeli enemy,” Nasrallah said, in his first public comments since the attack.
“Our killer is known, our enemy is known, our adversary is known … When the facts point to Israel, we accuse it,” he said in televised remarks to supporters in southern Beirut.
Israel has denied any role in the shooting and hinted that the motive may have been Hezbollah’s military support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his war with mainly Sunni Muslim rebels.
Laqis, a top Hezbollah figure who for decades had been critical in among other things weapons acquisitions, was gunned down in an attack claimed by a Sunni jihadist group. Top Hezbollah figures had nonetheless almost immediately blamed Israel for the killing and vowed revenge.
Earlier this week Israeli soldier Sgt. Shlomi Cohen was killed in a cross-border attack by a Lebanese sniper, focusing attention on the long-suspected infiltration of the Lebanese Armed Forces by Hezbollah.
Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, yesterday conveyed analysis from “observers in Beirut, including pro-Hezbollah journalists who suspected a link between the Laqis assassination and the murder of Cohen. Badran went further:
This is a very dangerous moment for the LAF. As Hezbollah’s options narrow and its enemies multiply, the party has used its control of the state and its penetration of its institutions, including the LAF, to fight its wars by proxy.
The United States channels millions of dollars in security assistance to the LAF – literally three-fourths of all international security assistance to the country – and analysts have begun to increasingly question the wisdom of such allocations given evidence of active collaboration between the LAF and Hezbollah.
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