Envoy sends letter to Ban Ki-moon, Security Council following Hezbollah claim of Mount Dov attack.
By MAYA SHWAYDERHassan Nasrallah Aug 2013 370(photo credit: REUTERS/Sharif Karim)
NEW YORK – Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor sent a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and to the Security Council on Wednesday demanding that the UN take action against Hezbollah, following secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah’s admission on Monday that his group was responsible for the attack on the IDF on Mount Dov (Shaba Farms) in the North on March 14.Prosor said Nasrallah was admitting that Hezbollah was in violation of the UN resolution that bans the group from operating in southern Lebanon.“Nasrallah’s declaration is additional proof that Hezbollah continues to operate south of the Litani River, in violation of UN Resolution 1791,” Prosor wrote. The resolution was unanimously adopted on December 19, 2007, following the Second Lebanon War.Speaking to the Lebanese daily newspaper As-Safir, Nasrallah said that the attack was revenge for an alleged Israel Air Force attack a week earlier, which allegedly targeted Hezbollah positions in southern Lebanon. The Hezbollah attack occurred four days later and put three IDF soldiers in the hospital. No one was reported killed.Originally, the al-Qaida-linked group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed responsibility on Twitter, which has been fighting against both Hezbollah and the current Syrian government, but Israeli media at the time reported it was Hezbollah.Nasrallah’s statement on Monday confirmed this.“Yes, the explosion in the Shaba Farms that Hezbollah has not claimed until now was the work of the resistance, which means the work of Hezbollah,” Nasrallah said, and continued: “You hit a military target and the resistance responded by hitting a military target.”He also hinted at future attacks: “This was not the reply, but this was part of the reply.”The Israeli mission to the UN did not respond to a request for comment. Ban’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said he did not yet know whether the secretary- general had received the letter.Hezbollah is classified as a terrorist group, in whole or in part, by the US, Israel, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the European Union, the Netherlands and the UK.
