TEL AVIV – The terrorist organization Hezbollah now has 120,000 missiles – 17 times the number it had a decade ago – with “more missiles below ground than European NATO allies have above ground,” Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon told the United Nations Security Council Tuesday.
Danon presented the statistics gathered by IDF intelligence to the Council at Tuesday’s meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Lebanon, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The meeting comes ten years after the adoption of Resolution 1701 at the end of the Second Lebanon War which called for “the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese State.”
As he presented the new intelligence to the Council’s members, Danon said: “When the war ended, this Council pledged that Hezbollah would no longer be allowed to threaten Israel and hold the people of Lebanon hostage.”
“I have the unfortunate task of informing this Council that, 10 years later, the situation has gone from bad to worse. The government of Lebanon never stopped Hezbollah, and Hezbollah never stopped its military buildup,” he said.
Danon distributed aerial photographs showing a southern Lebanon village in which a Hezbollah rocket launcher, an infantry position, and ammunition depots are wedged between homes in the proximity of schools and a mosque.
“This is exactly what we mean when we say that Hezbollah is committing a double war crime,” Danon told the forum.
“Not only are they attacking Israeli civilians, but they are using Lebanese civilians as human shields to defend their terror activity.”
“Let me be clear. Should Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, make the miscalculation that it did in 2006, Israel will be ready to defend its citizens in the most vigorous and forceful way possible,” he said. “We demand the removal of Hezbollah terrorists from southern Lebanon.”
At the meeting, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon pushed for Israelis and Palestinians to “immediately begin discussions with the Quartet” and stop any activity that may harm a two-state solution, including settlement expansion on the part of Israelis – which he called a “flagrant disregard of international law” – and violence and incitement to terrorism by the Palestinians.
Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour responded harshly to Danon’s presentation, accusing his Israeli counterpart of using the Lebanese threat to “divert attention from the main aspect of the conflict, which is the denial of the national rights of the Palestinian people and the perpetuation and continuation of the occupation.”
“He doesn’t want to face this global consensus that says that these are the core issues and Israel has to abide by them,” Mansour said.
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