Hizbullah has warned that the situation in the region will get worse if Israel is not called to account for the Freedom Flotilla attack, reports Omayma Abdel-Latif from Beirut A few hours after news broke of the Israeli attack on activists on the Freedom Flotilla while the latter was in international waters, thousands of Palestinian refugees in camps across Lebanon took to the streets to protest against Israel's latest crime. "Give us weapons and send us to Gaza," chanted protesters at one demonstration. In front of the UN offices in downtown Beirut, demonstrators waving Turkish and Palestinian flags gathered to pay tribute to those who had been killed in the Israeli raid. By midday, statements from Lebanese politicians were also coming in thick and fast, with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman describing the Israeli attack as "a crime against humanity"."It is a massacre that Israel has added to its list of murders and organised terrorism," the Lebanese president said in a statement. Druze leader Walid Jumblatt said the attack on the Freedom Flotilla had provided further proof of Israeli atrocities, which made it essential for resistance movements to retain their arms. He criticised those calling for neutrality towards Israel, or claiming that the retention of weapons by resistance movements in Lebanon gave Israel an excuse to attack the country. "Today, we have seen further proof that Israel does not need excuses to launch assaults," he said. For his part, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri described the attack as "a dangerous and insane move that will inflame the region. Lebanon strongly condemns this attack and urges the international community, in particular the major powers that are supposed to be entrusted with working on the peace process, to stop this violation of human rights." The same stand was made in a joint statement issued in Damascus on Monday during a meeting between Al-Hariri and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. "The Syrian Arab Republic and the Lebanese Republic strongly condemn the heinous crime committed by Israel this morning," the statement said, warning that Israel's actions threatened to "plunge the Middle East into a war whose impact will not be restricted to the countries of the region." A similar warning came from Lebanese Hizbullah MP Hassan Fadlallah, who said that if the international community and UN Security Council failed to act quickly to lift the siege on the Palestinians in Gaza and denounce Israel for its crimes, then the "situation in the region will get worse." The angry reaction across the Lebanese political spectrum should be viewed in the context of developments that have taken place over the past few weeks, there having already been a rise in tension following Israeli allegations that Syria was supplying Hizbullah with long-range missiles. The latest such allegations were made by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who claimed in press statements on 29 May that Hizbullah had bases in Syria and that the "Scud missiles remained in Syria and Hizbullah is managing them from there." Lebanon has also been bombarded by Israeli threats of a fresh round of hostilities, with Israel warning the Lebanese government that it will hold it responsible for any attack on Israel coming from Lebanese territory. Such threats could explain the flurry of western diplomatic activity in Lebanon recently, with Spanish, German and Egyptian diplomats flocking to Lebanon, stressing in each case their countries' support for the country, followed by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on 23 May. The diplomatic activities come against the background of recent Israeli claims of weapons transfers from Syria to Hizbullah. While Syria has denied the allegations, and Hizbullah has neither confirmed nor denied them, the claims have raised tension in a region where the situation is already volatile. French sources said the aim of Kouchner's visit, which included Damascus and Turkey, was to encourage Syria not to facilitate the delivery of arms to Hizbullah. The alleged weapons transfers also featured highly during talks between Al-Hariri and US President Barack Obama last week. However, Al-Hariri, who presides over a national unity government of which Hizbullah is a member, has had little to say about the alleged transfers. In a speech commemorating the 10th anniversary of liberation day in Lebanon, Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah suggested that the allegations about the Scud missile transfers had been made in order to give the US an excuse to make further transfers to Israel. "Israel used to wage wars knowing that its home front was safe. This has ended in the wake of the 2006 war. We have our home front, and they have theirs. They bomb us; we bomb them. They kill us; we kill them. This is their strategic weakness today," Nasrallah said. Nasrallah went on to say that there was now a new balance of power with Israel. "If you besiege our shores and our ports in any coming war, all of your military and commercial ships heading to Palestine will come under the fire of the Islamic Resistance across the Mediterranean," he said. Nasrallah said that the recent Western diplomatic efforts in Lebanon were meant to intimidate, and he denounced those Lebanese calling for the disarming of the resistance group. "To those who are still calling for the disarming of the resistance, I say that this rhetoric is useless. We shall face up to the next war, we shall win, and we shall change the face of this region," Nasrallah said.
