Former UN Amb. Bolton:
US must act to disarm Hizballah

New York — The head of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) Military Intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, said this week that the Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah is rebuilding itself and rearming while the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which was supposed to bring security to southern Lebanon and Israel, is making no effort to disarm it ( Jerusalem Post, January 9). Addressing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Yadlin also said that several hundred Al-Qaeda terrorists have arrived in Lebanon with the intent of carrying out terror attacks. “Between several dozen and several hundred Al-Qaeda activists have arrived in Lebanon from Iraq and Pakistan, in accordance with instructions from the group’s leadership to deploy in Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt in order to carry out terror attacks.” Yadlin also disclosed that Iran continues to provide funding and weapons to Syria, Hizballah and Hamas, and has close military and intelligence coordination with Syria, which along with Iran, supplies Hizballah and permits it to operate (Haaretz, January 10).

Yadlin’s testimony has been amplified by former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton who stated this week in reference to a question about the effectiveness of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSC) 1701, which ended last year’s Lebanon war that, “I think that the enhanced UNIFIL which was agreed to with a lot of fanfare as part of Resolution 1701 has not been successful in fully accomplishing the mission that we wanted to give to it. There’s no doubt Syria and Iran have very substantially re-supplied and rearmed Hizballah. The UNIFIL people have done essentially nothing about it. Those shipments across the Lebanese Syrian border have been reported by the UN itself, [it is] not something that comes just from the United States. It could be we are coming to a day of reckoning here on Resolution 1701 … I would hope the United States in the near future begins to take the next step that we made a conscious decision not to make in 1701 and that is disarming Hizballah. The unspoken premise of 1701 was first you stop them from getting external assistance by imposing an arms embargo but then the next step is to disarm Hizballah and we have not done anything on that. We are at the point, [where] we have got to move to that second step” ( Remarks before a Jewish group , January 5).

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The ZOA said at the time of its passage by the Security Council that UNSC 1701 would not result in the disarming of Hizballah and that, as a consequence, Israel’s security situation in the north would only get worse. It is now clear from General Yadlin’s testimony that UNSC 1701 has not even succeeded in its limited objective of stopping the flow of weaponry to Hizballah and that UNIFIL, which was supposed to ensure this, is basically ineffective. Already several months ago, it was reported that Hizballah had re-established many of its fortifications, including bases and arms caches built beneath Palestinian refugee camps, which are out of bounds to UNIFIL personnel. The situation continues to deteriorate. A number of military officials to whom I have spoken have told me that today, Hizballah has more missiles in its arsenal than it had before last summer’s war against Israel. We urge both Israel and United States governments to develop a clear political and military strategy for depriving Hizballah of its lines of support and to ensure that it is not allowed to re-emerge and threaten another major war on Israel.”