Jerusalem – Throughout the war in Lebanon this summer the Israeli armed forces conducted a manhunt for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with the intention of killing him.

Now, however, Israeli political and military sources say his assassination is no longer on the agenda.

The question of whether to eliminate Hassan Nasrallah arose several times during the 34-day conflict this past summer. In the first few days of the war the Israel Defense Force leadership preferred not to kill him, but as the war progressed it was decided that he should be a target for assassination.

When the war ended, IDF Intelligence recommended that the hunt for Nasrallah should not continue, due to the cease-fire and the assessment that the international community would not accept such an act. Another reason for this view was that the killing would cause a resumption of the war with more violence than before.

Nevertheless, in spite of the recommendation of IDF Intelligence, the political echelon ordered that preparations for killing Nasrallah should continue, and this policy remained in force until September 22.

On that day, Hezbollah held its victory rally in Beirut, and promised that Nasrallah would be there for his first public appearance since he went underground. Before the rally IDF officers took the view that it would be possible to kill him from the air, but only at the cost of killing dozens of bystanders. This time the political echelon accepted the army’s recommendation that an assassination would not be appropriate.

After that there was a growing acceptance by the political echelon that the possibility of assassinating Nasrallah should be removed from the agenda and that the hunt for him should be discontinued – at least for the next few months.

In the meantime, at a meeting of the Israeli Defense Minister with senior officers last Wednesday, it was decided that provocations by Hezbollah against Israeli armed forces along the Lebanese/Israeli border should meet with a tough reaction. In the past few weeks Hezbollah supporters have returned to the border fence to demonstrate and provoke Israeli soldiers.

The security establishment has decided not to let this pass without retaliation. The Northern Command has decided to train soldiers to disperse demonstrations in a manner similar to the training given to soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza.

“The IDF does not intend to let Hezbollah supporters demonstrate with impunity,” a source in Northern Command said late last week. “Our practice of ignoring demonstrations after the withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 will not be repeated this time. We have informed UNIFIL [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon] and officers of the Lebanese army that if the demonstrations continue after our forces withdraw from Lebanese territory, we will take steps to disperse them and to chase the Hezbollah supporters with the flags away from the border fence.”

©The Bulletin 2006

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David Bedein
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.