The Sydney MORNING HERALD by Steven Erlanger and Richard Oppel in Jerusalem August 8, 2006
SYRIAN transport aircraft that carried aid to Iran after a massive earthquake in 2003 returned to Syria carrying sophisticated weapons which Damascus then passed on to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israeli military intelligence alleges.
As the Israeli army struggles for a fourth week to defeat Hezbollah, the shipments are just one indication of how - with the help of its main sponsors, Iran and Syria - the Shiite militia group sharply improved its arsenal and strategies in the six years since Israel ended its occupation of southern Lebanon.
Among the weapons that Syrian planes brought from Iran were long-range Zelzal missiles, Israel alleges.
Israel says it will aim air strikes at resupply convoys and will get any international peacekeeping force to police the Lebanese-Syrian border. "Preventing Syrian and Iranian resupply is a key," a senior Israeli official said yesterday.
Hezbollah is a militia trained like an army and equipped like a state and its fighters "are nothing like Hamas or the Palestinians", said an Israeli soldier who has just returned from Lebanon.
"They are trained and highly qualified," he said.
Much attention has been focused on Hezbollah's astonishing stockpile of Syrian- and Iranian-made missiles, some 3000 of which have already fallen on Israel in the latest conflict.
But Iran and Syria also provided satellite communications and some of the world's best infantry weapons, including modern, Russian-made anti-tank weapons and Semtex plastic explosives, as well as the training required to use them effectively against Israeli armour.
It is Hezbollah's skilful use of these weapons - in particular, missiles with a range of about three kilometres - that has caused most casualties in the Israeli forces.
Hezbollah fighters use tunnels to emerge and fire a shoulder-held anti-tank missile, and then disappear again.
"We know what they have and how they work," said Brigadier-General Yossi Kuperwasser, until recently the Israeli army's director of intelligence analysis, "but we don't know where all the tunnels are, so they can achieve tactical surprise." The Israelis say these factors explain why they are moving with caution.
They say Hezbollah's fighters number between 2000 and 4000, aided by a larger circle of part-timers who provide logistics and storage of weapons in houses and civilian buildings.
Hezbollah operates like a revolutionary force within a civilian sea, making it hard to fight without occupying or bombing civilian areas. On orders, some fighters emerge to retrieve launchers, fire missiles and then melt away. Still, the numbers are small compared with the Israeli army and are roughly the size of one Syrian division.
Iranian air force officers have made repeated trips to Lebanon to train Hezbollah to aim and fire missiles, intelligence officials in Washington say. But so far Iran has not allowed Hezbollah to fire one of the Zelzal missiles, the Israelis say.
Syria has given Hezbollah its most sophisticated anti-tank weapons, sold to the Syrian army by Russia. Despite Israeli complaints to Moscow, "Russia just decided to close its eyes", a senior Israeli official said.
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