Israel To Continue Lebanon Overflights
Ryan R. Jones - All Headline News Middle East Correspondent Jerusalem, Israel (AHN) - The last of Israel's soldiers left Lebanon early Sunday morning, but Israeli aircraft will continue to violate Lebanese airspace for the foreseeable future, reported the Israeli daily Ha'aretz on Wednesday. Israel sees no reason to continue maintaining a troop presence in southern Lebanon, but remains skeptical that the terms of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which brought an end to the summer's war with Hezbollah, will be fully implemented by Beirut and thousands U.N. peacekeepers deployed to the region. Jerusalem insists that it will not consider Resolution 1701 fulfilled until two Israeli soldiers being held by Hezbollah are freed and an inspection mechanism is put in place that will deny arms shipments to the terror group. In the absence of such a mechanism, Israel sees its intelligence-gathering overflights as a necessity. Earlier in the week, Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose nation has been Hezbollah's primary supplier, insisted it is impossible to prevent arms smugglers from getting weapons to the Lebanese militants. For its part, Hezbollah is refusing to disarm and claims that it still has up to 20,000 surface-to-surface missiles aimed at the Jewish state.
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