JERUSALEM, Sept 30: Israel should ‘liquidate’ Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah ‘at the first opportunity’, Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer, a former defence minister, told army radio on Saturday.
“We must liquidate Nasrallah at the first opportunity, because he is the embodiment of evil, not just for us but for Muslims and Christians too,” Ben Eliezer said.
The minister is a member of the centre-left Labour party, the main coalition partner of the centrist Kadima formation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
During the Lebanon war in July and August, political and military leaders warned that the Hezbollah chief was in Israel’s sights. Media reports said several attempts were made to kill him during the month-long onslaught.
The southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, were devastated by tons of bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes.
At the time Israeli Prime Minister Edhud Olmert said the normal rules of war did not apply to Hezbollah, which was a ‘terrorist organisation’.
Ben Eliezer on Saturday did not rule out a resumption of hostilities in south Lebanon after the Israeli pullout.
“My impression is that war could break out again in Lebanon over the next three or four months,” he said, adding: “Arrangements in place in south Lebanon after the Israeli withdrawal will not hold.
“Hezbollah will profit from the opportunity to make itself stronger on the backs of the Lebanese army and the foreign soldiers deployed in south Lebanon,” he said.
On Thursday, Mr Olmert ruled out a new confrontation with Hezbollah in the immediate future, however.
“The chances that Hezbollah would be persuaded to mount in the short term a major military confrontation such as we saw this summer are very slight,” he said in an interview on public radio.
“But I do not exclude the possibility that the Iranians and to a certain extent the Syrians will try to manipulate Hezbollah, so that we should expect to be tested,” Mr Olmert added.
Nasrallah made his first public appearance since the war at a huge ‘victory’ rally in Beirut on Sept 22, emerging from more than two months in hiding to address a rapturous crowd in the shattered southern suburbs.
A hero for many Arabs but Israel’s public enemy number one, Nasrallah had not been seen in public since July 12 — the day the war broke out after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid.
The militant leader’s predecessor was assassinated by Israel in 1992, and Nasrallah said he had decided to attend the Beirut rally only about half an hour before it was due to begin. —AFP