Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah said his Iranian-sponsored militia has deployed more than 20,000 rockets in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah, in his first appearance since the 34-day war with Israel ended on August 14, prodid not identify the rockets, proclaimed on Friday that “”We celebrate a great divine, historic and strategic victory,” Nasrallah said during his “victory rally” on September 22. Nasrallah’s assertion marked the highest number of rockets claimed by Hizbullah. In July, the Hizbullah chief said his organization had more than 12,000 rockets, a figure that had been confirmed by Israeli intelligence.

During the war, Israel assessed that it destroyed at least one-third of Hizbullah’s rocket arsenal, comprised mostly of 122 mm Katyusha short-range rockets. Israeli intelligence asserted that Hizbullah’s entire medium- and long-range rocket arsenal was destroyed.

However, Nasrallah said that Hizbullah has retained its rocket arsenal in Southern Lebanon. He said some of those weapons were located along the northern Israeli border with Lebanon.

“He says they have 20,000 rockets; we should believe him,” Israeli cabinet Minister and former Defence minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said on Monday. “We should prepare the army.”

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David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.