IS ISRAEL ATTEMPTING TO ‘WEDGE’ IRAN AND EGYPT OVER SUPPOSED HEZBOLLAH ‘TERRORIST’ ACTIVITY IN EGYPT?

Recently there have been reports of a Hezbollah ‘terrorist ring’ operating in Egypt. At first it was reported that Hezbollah agents were looking for Israeli and other foreign targets in the Sinai. Today, however, the accusations have been added to; they now say that the Hezbollah operatives were also planning other attacks “against targets in the Suez Canal”. The Ha’aretz report names a trio of senior Hezbollah intelligence men that report to an Iranian general in Lebanon. Ha’aretz also puts a name to the head of the Hezbollah ‘terrorist ring’ in Egypt.

One needs to wonder about the source of these reports which Ha’aretz says is the CIA and Israel’s Mossad. One then needs to wonder also why Hezbollah, who are desperately trying to avoid conflict with an Israel that is now led by an extreme right-wing Zionist intent on Hezbollah’s destruction, would want to provoke both Israel and Egypt in this way. As Zvi Mazel writes in the ‘Jerusalem Post’: “Many Egyptians can't bring themselves to believe that Hizbullah was running agents and planning terror attacks in their country. Most Arab countries couldn't believe it, either, though they have offered no reaction. They are still trying to come to terms with the new situation.”

And why should anyone believe it? While Hezbollah may well attack Israel as a defence against Israeli aggression against Lebanon, there is no reason why Hezbollah would want to go deliberately looking for trouble with Israel by attacking Israeli targets outside of Israel and certainly not against a fellow Arab nation whose people actually are sympathetic toward the causes of those that are resisting Israel’s aggression both in Palestine and in Lebanon.

One reason why Israel and its allies would want to create animosity between the Egyptians and Hezbollah is to extend that animosity against Iran as Israeli President Shimon Peres accuses Iran of ‘wanting to take over the Middle East’ and gears up to find casus belli for war against Iran.

And the ‘wedging’ isn’t confined to Egypt and Iran via Hezbollah; Israel has also been attempting to demonstrate to the rest of the Arab world, the majority of whom are Sunni while Hezbollah and Iran are predominately Shi’ite, that Hezbollah are acting against them as well. The idea here is fairly transparent inasmuch that Hezbollah has a close relationship with Hamas in the Gaza which is Sunni demonstrating clearly that there is actually very little animosity between Sunni and Shia despite Israel and their allies best efforts to ‘wedge’ the two groupings.
The attempts by Israel to ‘wedge’ Sunni and Shia by pitting Hezbollah against Arab nations is just another branch in the Israeli propaganda road toward their final confrontation with Iran.