The Truth Seeps Out, Even in the UK Press

The following is excerpted from here.

A. Notice the UNIFIL knows everything about Hezballah arming.

B. Notice that the roads were closed off 3 (!) years ago.

C. Notice that all knew it was a military zone and yet civilians live nearby.

One such position lies between the villages of Naqoura and Alma al-Shaab. The rocky, uninhabited hillside and deep ravine of 12 square miles is covered in a dense undergrowth of juniper bushes and scrub oak where Hezbollah over the past three years has established an unseen, but clearly formidable, military infrastructure of weapons depots, tunnels and bunkers.

For almost a month the Lebanese guerrillas operating on the hillside have withstood huge Israeli artillery barrages and air raids that have burned vast tracts of the hillside.

Even seasoned UN observers, whose headquarters is at the foot of the hill, are baffled at how the guerrillas have managed to survive the onslaught and keep up a steady rate of rocket fire. “We simply have no idea how they have been able to fire rockets for so long from more or less the same location and the Israelis have not been able to stop them,” said a senior officer for United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

A narrow lane winds up the hill from Naqoura and ends at the border fence at Labboune, a long-abandoned farm where the UN has a communications position. Labboune was a popular tourist spot because of its sweeping views over the Western Galilee coastline but Hezbollah fighters sealed off the road three years ago and the area became a military zone.

Military observers believe that in the following months Hezbollah built a series of defences and fortifications in expectation of a showdown with Israel. Uniformed and armed fighters could occasionally be spotted creeping through the dense bush on reconnaissance patrols along the border.

“They have amassed huge stockpiles of rockets in the area,” General Alain Pellegrini, Unifil’s commander, told The Times in an interview at his office in Naqoura. “I think the Israelis were hoping they would have had a faster success against Hezbollah by now.”