Israel threatens Hezbollah boss
2006-07-14 10:41
Jerusalem - Israel threatened on Friday to eliminate Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese Hezbollah leader who has long been a thorn in the side of the Jewish state, after the latest crisis over the seizure of two Israeli soldiers.
"Nasrallah decided his own fate," interior minister Roni Bar-On announced on public radio.
"We will settle our accounts with him when the time comes."
The threat came as Israeli forces intensified attacks on Lebanon in pre-dawn raids, striking at the heart of Hezbollah's command headquarters in Beirut's suburbs, amid world concern that the escalation could spark a regional war.
Hezbollah, a fundamentalist Shi'ite Muslim movement whose name means Party of God, has retaliated against what it has branded "massacres" with a wave of rocket attacks against northern towns in Israel.
Israel will 'break' Hezbollah
Justice minister Hamon Ramon told army radio Israel would fight Hezbollah with the "same means used by the Americans against Osama bin Laden," the leader of al-Qaeda, or employed by the Russians against "Chechen terrorists".
Defence minister Amir Peretz announced on Thursday that Israel intended to "break" Hezbollah, with the Jewish state in the midst of a deadly air, sea and ground offensive on Lebanon in which around 50 people have been killed.
Two Israeli civilians were killed and scores wounded on Thursday when rockets rained down on northern towns from southern Lebanon. More than half a million residents in the north were ordered into bomb shelters.
'Smash Hezbollah'
Local newspapers were Friday convinced that that the country was facing a facing a supreme test and that Hezbollah, headed by the charismatic 45-year-old sheikh, must be pulverised and that all restraints are off.
"The Target: Nasrallah," cried the front-page headline in the top-selling Yediot Aharanot newspaper; "Smash Hezbollah" screamed rival daily Maariv.
"The decision as to his fate has already been made, and that he will be killed. As of now, this is just a matter of finding the opportunity," Yediot said in an editorial.
Prisoner exchange
Nasrallah, a skilled negotiator and arguably one of the most powerful people in Lebanon, has demanded a prisoner exchange for the release of the two Israeli soldiers, nothing less and nothing more.
"It is for good reason that a parallel is being drawn with the tenacious British resistance against Hitler's blitz in World War II," ran an unequivocal editorial in Israel's Maariv newspaper.
'More dangerous than Hitler'
"Hezbollah must never be allowed to approach the border fence... This threat must be abolished. Nasrallah must die," it added.
Maariv charged that Nasrallah, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Damascus-based Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal were "perhaps even more dangerous" than Hitler, responsible for exterminating six million Jews.