An outlaw state: Israel breaks ceasefire, threatens to assassinate Hezbollah leader

Both Lebanese and United Nations officials denounced the raid. Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora issued a press statement in Beirut calling the attack a “flagrant violation” of the UN ceasefire resolution, while UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said he was “deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities.”

While their ostensible purpose was to intercept weapons shipments from Syria to Hezbollah fighters near Baalbek, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) captured no weapons and offered no evidence that any such shipments were the actual target of the night-time raid. It appears rather that the commandos were seeking to kidnap a top Hezbollah leader, Sheik Mohammed Yazbeck, in order to exchange him for the two IDF soldiers captured by Hezbollah last month, the nominal pretext for the month-long Israeli assault on Lebanon.

According to reports in the Lebanese press, based on local eyewitnesses, the Israeli commandos landed by helicopter in the eastern foothills of Mount Lebanon, dressed in Lebanese Army uniforms and seeking to conceal their identity as they passed through Hezbollah checkpoints on the road to Baalbek by speaking in Arabic. They were headed for a school thought to be owned by Yazb

Read More
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/aug2006/leba-a21.shtml