From our Stop the Presses Department and the Washington Times:
BENT JBAIL, Lebanon — Hezbollah, the Shi’ite militia that dominates southern Lebanon, used the fifth anniversary of Israel’s troop withdrawal to warn authorities not to try to disarm its fighters.
“Any hand that reaches out to our weapons is an Israeli hand that will be cut off,” the group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, told a rally in a rare public appearance.
“If anyone, anyone, thinks of disarming the resistance, we will fight them like the martyrs of Karbala,” he added, referring to the epic battle in southern Iraq more than 1,300 years ago that led to a permanent split in Islam between the Shi’ites and Sunnis…
The United Nations passed a resolution in September that compelled Syrian forces to leave Lebanon and demanded that militias in Lebanon give up their weapons…
Hezbollah, a fundamentalist group that seeks an Islamic state in Lebanon similar to that in Iran, is widely respected in much of Lebanon, where it is credited with driving out the Israelis.
With 12 members of parliament and a vast network of social services, job training and hospitals that serve Lebanon’s impoverished Shi’ite community, the group also commands near-fanatical loyalty from Lebanon’s Shi’ites…