Friday, Nov. 06, 2009

Israelis capture Iranian rockets for Hezbollah

JERUSALEM -- Israel said Thursday that Hezbollah could have bombarded the Jewish state for a month with the weapons confiscated in the country's largest-ever arms seizure, and called on the world to focus on the Lebanese militants' chief backer, Iran, rather than assailing Israel.

Palestinian leaders expressed concern that Israel would use the seizure of a ship laden with what officials described as hundreds of tons of weapons from Iran to divert attention from its settlement expansion and accusations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Hezbollah denied any connection to the weapons.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, commenting on United Nations deliberations Thursday over Israel's conduct during last winter's Gaza war, said Iranian efforts to kill civilians by smuggling massive amounts of weapons to Hezbollah are the real war crime.

"It is a war crime that the U.N. Security Council should have a special meeting over," he told reporters in Tel Aviv. "A major component of this shipment were rockets whose only goal was to hit civilians and kill as many civilians as possible -- women, children, old people," Netanyahu said.

Israel displayed on Wednesday the contents of the ship it seized off Cyprus -- crates filled with rockets, missiles, mortars, anti-tank weapons and munitions -- the largest such haul in the country's history. Israel's claim that the weapons came from Iran were bolstered by Iranian markings on the sides of the containers and what it said was a document proving the ship had set off from an Iranian port.