“[Barak] I reiterate: In the place where the incident took place, the fence is tens of meters inside Israeli territory. Therefore, even if we cross the fence, we don’t get into Lebanese territory. It is all a provocation. And anyway, they didn’t fire on the tractor, they fired on the battalion commander and the deputy commander who were standing along with a few people in an IDF outpost on Israeli territory a few hundred meters away. To make the story short, it was grave. There is no need to elaborate: The Lebanese Army carried out a grave act, the Lebanese Army and the Lebanese Government are responsible for it. It’s part of the recently escalating acts of provocation.”
The point that immediately comes to mind and that the Defense Attache and the Pentagon folks in general must be scrambling on is: Did the LAF use sniper gear supplied by the US to kill the Israeli?
Remember that this was a point of extreme controversy after Nahr al-Barid because, according to some reports, the LAF was granted sniper rifles BUT they had to be returned after the conflict – which really pissed off some LAF folks. Some of the US press releases have, after that time, referred to the “same front line” weapons as US troops and one, if I remember correctly, did refer to sniper gear.
If the Israelis did indeed want to strike a good blow against LAF funding now winding its way to actual appropriation and transfer etc – well this incident is a perfect punctuation point…. Not that such a conspiracy would ever be thought of, much less executed….
3 comments:
Notice how he does not mention the timeline for this incident. Reports elsewhere claim that the two Israeli officers were only shot after the Israelis had fired missiles into Lebanon. Expect more obfuscation on this matter to come.
This is strange considering Israel has interests in making the Lebanese Army as strong as possible to counter Hezbollah.
I didn't see Israel protesting to America/France during the last 4 years when NATO was spending 100 million a year on Lebanese military equipment.
But maybe its a case that Israel wants to give weapons to the Lebanese only to fight other Lebanese factions.
Either way if the US cuts off funding for the Lebanese Army the only possible winner would be Hezbollah.
Peace
Gonzolegend
So someone did a forensic test already? And, Of course, the LAF has no other rifles?
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