Lebanon to host visit to Beirut Airport to refute Netanyahu’s claims
“Netanyahu’s words from the most important international stage are not simple words,” a Lebanese official told the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFUpdated: OCTOBER 1, 2018 17:51beirut airport 298 ap(photo credit: AP)
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry stated it will host a visit for Western Ambassadors to the site near Beirut’s International Airport where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed precision missiles, belonging to Hezbollah, are kept.In his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu said that “Hezbollah uses innocent people in Beirut as shields. They built missile facilities near Beirut airport. Here is a picture worth 1,000 missiles,” Netanyahu said, presenting the picture.“Look at this, next to the facility there is a soccer field. I have a message to Hezbollah: Israel knows what you are doing and where you’re doing it, and it will not let you get away with it.”“Netanyahu’s words from the most important international stage are not simple words,” a Lebanese official told the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar. “We have invited representatives of several countries to refute his allegations.”The Lebanese Foreign Ministry is also planning to contact other foreign ministries in order to refute the Prime Minister’s claims.Russian diplomatic sources told a newspaper close to Hezbollah that “ Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s remarks in response to Netanyahu’s speech came as a prelude to any Israeli plan to attack Lebanon, since any attack could lead to an explosion of the situation, not only in Lebanon by in the region as a whole, it could also delay efforts to restore stability in the region.”It should be noted that Lebanon rejected the photographs presented by Netanyahu. Lebanese Foreign Minister Gibran Bassil said that “Israel is once again making excuses to justify an attack, and the world is preparing legitimate reasons to violate the sovereignty of states while forgetting that Lebanon has defeated it [Israel] and its aggression, and that [Israel’s] arrogance and new friendships will not help her this time either.”The Chairman of the Lebanese Association, Jihad al-Shahaf, rejected the claims saying that “the Israeli army is worried about threats to their homeland, and they have no problem making false claims. The arrogance and aggression of the enemy are endless.”Hezbollah’s Minister in the transitional government, Mohammed Fanish, told the Lebanon National News Agency, “Leave Netanyahu with his lies and illusions; let him talk and incite the way he wants. We will suffice with the fact the resistance has its power, as [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah pointed out, and we will stand up to every Israeli aggression in Lebanon.”A senior figure of the Lebanese Prime Minister’s faction, Mustafa Alloush, said in parallel to the London-based newspaper Al-Hayat that “Israel has repeated Nasrallah’s statement about the precision missiles. It was Hezbollah’s mistake to reveal the type of missiles it possessed, unless they were interested in a psychological warfare, which now gives Israel an excuse to explain its aggression towards Lebanon.”
