Note: The translations of articles from the Hebrew press are prepared by the Government Press Office as a service to foreign journalists in Israel. They express the views of the authors.
HIZBULLAH'S GOAL: TO BREAK THE JEZZINE ENCLAVE
(Background article by Ron Ben-Yishai, "Yediot", 19.08.97, p.4)
For several months, Hizbullah has been focusing its efforts on the Jezzine enclave and the SLA battalion which serves as its garrison.
The main reason for this is that the Shi'ite fundamentalist organization's main faction, led by Secretary-General Nasrallah, has recently been hit from every quarter from the IDF, from the opposition within Hizbullah, from the Lebanese government and desperately needs some sort of achievement.
The Christian enclave is almost asking to be preyed upon, being the soft underbelly of the network which Israel has established in cooperation with General Lahad: it has no IDF forces to defend it, there is no territorial contiguity between it and the security zone, and it is practically an island in an area controlled by Hizbullah and the Amal organization.
The wrecking of the Jezzine enclave is liable to cause the SLA's morale to crumble, and open a free passage for Hizbullah from the Lebanese Bek'a Valley towards southern Lebanon's coastal area.
There is no doubt that it is well understood in Lebanon why the SLA battalion commander in Jezzine allowed himself to explicitly violate an IDF order and shell Sidon. He may have done so even if he had not received authorization orders from General Lahad. One would have to be an angel to see the bodies of his brother's children, his brother having also been killed by a Hizbullah bomb, and show restraint.