JERUSALEM – Hamas and its arms smugglers are turning the Gaza Strip into another southern Lebanon, Israel’s secret service chief said yesterday.
“They are building bunkers . . . deploying anti-tank missiles and ground-to-ground missiles,” Yuval Diskin told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Israeli parliament.
“Hamas is organizing itself according to the model of southern Lebanon, using the lessons of the war,” he said.
Natan Sharansky, a member of the committee, said, “In 10 years of hearing security reports, I never heard such a clear-cut, frightening one.”
Diskin said that since Israeli withdrew from the Gaza Strip last year, some 15,000 automatic rifles, 4 million bullets, 15,000 bombs and dozens of anti-aircraft missiles have been smuggled in, mainly through the Rafah terminal from Egypt.
Meanwhile, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said the two Israeli soldiers whose kidnapping triggered the Lebanon war with Hezbollah are alive, as is a third soldier seized in Gaza.
Jackson said he received that information Monday in Damascus while meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal.
The soldiers’ relatives met yesterday with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was visiting Israel as part of an 11-day trip through the Middle East to shore up the cease-fire.
With Post Wire Services