31/01/2007 http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=10446

 Al-Manar special report – Hasan Hijazi – Translated/

The real purposes of the Israeli war against Lebanon are being disclosed, day after day, to show that the war was planned in advance to eliminate Hezbollah. After the enemy’s interior minister admitted that the July war did not aim to “free” the two Israeli captured soldiers, and after what the newspapers and the occupation soldiers said about trainings aimed to start the war in addition to reports inside the general staff that revealed ready plans to launch a war against Hezbollah, the Israeli war minister Amir Peretz finally admitted that the war was not to “free” the two captured soldiers but it aimed to confront the mounting threat of Hezbollah. He said that Israel would have found itself facing more difficult and more dangerous threats if it did not confront Hezbollah in that war.

 Peretz affirmed, with or without his knowledge, what Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said before when he said that it is impossible for any state to launch a war like the July-war just to “free” two captured soldiers. The war minister said, “Is there anyone who really believes that the capture of the two soldiers in the north was the reason that led to the war? There was an accumulation of the incidents before the war which led us to be very cautious to more serious threats. If we did not confront them, we would have found ourselves, after several years, in front of harsh mounting threats and more dangerous than we have discovered.”  After Israel failed to achieve the goals it had put for the war and mounted questions over ending the war before freeing the two captured soldiers, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could only say that “we are not ready to have more casualties among the Israeli soldiers in order to regain two soldiers.”