munaeem | 29 August, 2006 02:16
Via the BBC: Nasrallah sorry for scale of war
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has said he would not have ordered the capture of two Israeli soldiers if he had known it would lead to such a war.”Had we known that the kidnapping of the soldiers would have led to this, we would definitely not have done it,” he said in an interview on Lebanese TV.
“We did not think that there was a 1% chance that the kidnapping would lead to a war of this scale and magnitude,” Sheikh Nasrallah said.
“Now you ask me if this was 11 July and there was a 1% chance that the kidnapping would lead to a war like the one that has taken place, would you go ahead with the kidnapping?
“I would say no, definitely not, for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military and political reasons.
“Neither I, Hezbollah, prisoners in Israeli jails and nor the families of the prisoners would accept it.”
If true, then Israel did achieve a substantially important outcome from this conflict: Hezbollah will think twice about what type of provocation it is willing to risk. However, I have to wonder about the statement, as on the other hand, this could very easily be Nasrallah attempting to save face/cast all the blame for the destruction on Israel (”Hey, we just wanted a prisoner exchange, not all this death and destruction”).
Certainly such a statement allows Nasrallah the opportunity to continue to build on Hezbollah’s post-conflict PR offensive.
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