"...Mleeta provides another sign that Israeli deterrence in Lebanon is disintegrating..."

WINEP/ here

"...... He began our tour in "The Abyss" -- a pit filled with Israeli helmets, boots, cluster bombs, and overturned military vehicles. At the center of the display is an Israeli Merkava-4 tank, with its gun turret tied in a knot. As we ascended a spiral walkway overlooking the display, I caught sight of a tombstone embossed with the Israel Defense Forces symbol, and the word "Abyss" written in big, concrete Hebrew letters.

Abu Hadi told us Mleeta was the inspiration of Imad Mughniyah,........One of the world's most wanted men and reportedly a master of disguise, Hezbollah would barely mention Mughniyah's name until his mysterious February 2008 assassination by car bomb in Damascus. Now, the party brings him up at every turn.....

Throughout Mleeta, exhibits aimed to instill visitors with Hezbollah's spartan military ethic. ..........Mleeta aims to place a halo around Hezbollah's foreign patrons. We descended into a maze of tunnels Hezbollah had carved into Mleeta's rocky hilltop, where displays showed command centers, field kitchens, and weapons caches. Photographs of Hezbollah leaders standing side by side with Iran's former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei .......

The park also encourages visitors to celebrate Hezbollah's arsenal in its "rocket garden." On display are Hezbollah's standard 107mm and 120mm Katyusha rockets, which rained down on northern Israel by the thousands during the 2006 war. But there are also a number of more advanced weapons on display, including U.S.-made TOW missiles -- reportedly acquired by Hezbollah through the arms-for-hostages swaps that were later exposed in the Iran-Contra affair -- RPG 29s, and a Kornet-E anti-tank guided missile, which Hezbollah used to decimate Israeli tank columns in 2006.....

Since the end of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, Hezbollah's decision to hang back and replenish its weapons caches, aided by the presence of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in the south, has resulted in the calmest period along the Lebanese-Israeli border in decades. But Mleeta, and the enthusiastic Lebanese reaction to it, is only the latest sign that Israel's power of deterrence in Lebanon is rapidly deteriorating.............."