Fneish: Hezbollah obliged to seek out all means to deter Israel

Hezbollah Minister Mohammad Fneish said Saturday his party has a duty to acquire any means to deter Israel and defend Lebanon. “It is the resistance's right and duty to seek and possess whatever [means] that can deter the enemy and fortify deterrence in order to continue the balance of deterrence between us and the Israeli enemy,” Fneish, a state minister in the government, said at a ceremony in Mayfadoun, south Lebanon. Fneish’s comments come days after Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said the party had successfully flown a drone into Israeli airspace. The unmanned aerial vehicle, code named “Ayyoub,” was later shot down by the Israeli air force. In a swipe at the Lebanese opposition, Fneish said the “Ayyoub operation” would not have been possible had Hezbollah surrendered its weapons. “If the resistance was lured into agreeing to what they [March 14 coalition] wanted, we wouldn't have seen such progress in capabilities,” he said, adding that UAV operation over Israel demonstrated that Hezbollah’s arms were directed at “the enemy to confront its ambitions and defend Lebanon.” Nasrallah said Thursday that the drone, named after e Hezbollah fighter who specialized in reconnaissance, flew over "sensitive" sites including the suspect Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev Desert. The Israeli military has on one other occasion shot down a UAV belonging to Lebanese group. In July 2006, a Hezbollah drone was downed by the Jewish state over its territorial waters. A year earlier, Hezbollah succeeded in flying a drone over parts of northern Israel. In his speech Saturday, Fneish also spoke about the mounting reports of Hezbollah fighters battling alongside Syria’s government forces. He described the reports as part of attacks and media campaigns to accuse the resistance and distort its image. On Thursday, Nasrallah denied that Hezbollah members were fighting alongside Syrian government forces in the unrest which according to the U.N. has claimed over 20,000 lives. The Daily Star