Barak Warns of Hizbullah”s Capabilities

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said that Hizbullah is stronger than ever and criticized Premier Ehud Olmert”s government for miscalculations during the 2006 war, army radio reported.

 

“Hizbullah is stronger than ever and has more rockets than at the outbreak of the Lebanon war in the summer of 2006,” the station reported Barak as telling a closed-door meeting of military officials in Tel Aviv Monday.

 

He reportedly faulted the government for not applying the principle that the Jewish state initiates war only as a last resort and that victory should be quick.

 

Barak, a former prime minister and current leader of the Labor party, was not in the cabinet during the 34-day war that was sparked after Hizbullah seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid.

 

Barak”s comments came the same day a statement issued by the Gathering of Muslim Ulemas quoted Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah as saying his group was “ready to confront any crazy adventure carried out by the Zionist enemy that, God Willing, would face a stronger defeat than the one encountered during the July (2006) aggression, because the resistance is now stronger.”

 

The Israeli government commission investigating state and military conduct during the offensive on Lebanon said Sunday that it will release its final report on January 30.

 

In its interim findings last year the Winograd Commission roasted Olmert, former defense minister Amir Peretz

and former chief of staff Dan Halutz over the war.