Hezbollah 'clumsy' in blaming Israel for Hariri assassination
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Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite organization Hezbollah, on last Tuesday blamed Israel for the 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. On Monday, Nasrallah is scheduled to hold a news conference to reveal the evidence for his accusation.
Both Israeli and Arab analysts believed that this appears to be a "clumsy" effort to deflect attention away from an upcoming United Nations report that is expected to state that members of Hezbollah's military wing carried out the Valentine's Day hit on Hariri.
Initially, the UN panel suggested that Syrian officials were behind the plot, while now it is thought that the inquiry will name the Hezbollah operatives when its findings are published in September.
Nasrallah's anticipated comments come a week after tensions were heightened between Israel and Lebanon with a cross-border shooting incident left four Lebanese and one Israeli dead.
Nasrallah's logic
Just hours following that clash Nasrallah appeared on Al-Manar, Hezbollah's own satellite TV channel, in part to lambaste Israel for what he claimed was its unprovoked attack against Lebanon. The next day, UN said the tree cut down by Israeli troops which caused the clash was on the Israeli side of the shared border, which favors Israel.
During his two-hour address on the TV, Nasrallah said he would speak again in the coming week to present evidence regarding the Hariri killing. Arabic media sources reported on Sunday that Nasrallah will claim this evidence points in Israel's direction.
"Whoever was behind this, it's very unlikely that we'll find out through a speech by Hassan Nasrallah," said Nadim Shehadi, an expert on Syria and Lebanon from the Chatham House institute in London.
For some three years, a UN investigation team has been working independently to try to discover who assassinated Hariri, and Shehadi does not believe that Nasrallah will be able to produce any new material that will in any way have been overlooked or failed to reach the investigators.
"This is a very clumsy diversion tactic on behalf of Nasrallah," he said on Sunday.
It is a view shared by Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, just outside Tel Aviv.
"It's a very weak tactic if that's the best Nasrallah can do. He's in a bad shape because nobody is going to buy into that story," said Steinberg.
"We've seen a lot of actions by Nasrallah in the last period of time that show him in an increasingly desperate situation that he seems to have peaked in his ability to have influence and that has created a certain amount of frustration and a little bit of lashing out," he added.
Shehadi is of the opinion that Nasrallah is extremely concerned about the likely findings of the UN panel and is trying to deflect attention away from it.
Some Israeli experts are suggesting that last week's cross- border shooting was orchestrated by Nasrallah to try to provoke Israel as part of his plan to minimize the impact of the upcoming UN report.
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