Israel will hold Assad responsible if Hezbollah attacks

Hezbollah fully coordinated with Assad, Iran, official indicates; Hezbollah works "hand-in-glove" with Syrian regime.

By HERB KEINON
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah 370 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah 370
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The lines between Hezbollah and the Syrian regime are so blurred that Israel will hold Damascus responsible if Hezbollah bombards Israel in the coming days, Israeli officials indicated on Wednesday.
Israel has made it very clear over the past two days that while it is not involved in the Syrian civil war, it will respond fiercely if Syrian President Bashar Assad decides to respond to an expected Western attack by firing missiles at Israel.
This raises another question, however: What if the missiles were fired from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and not by Assad’s regime in Damascus.
“They cannot play the game that Hezbollah is somehow an independent actor,” one official said. “We have seen over the last few months that Hezbollah is coordinated very closely with the Assad regime, and it is the Iranians that have orchestrated that close cooperation.”
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If Israel is attacked by Hezbollah, the official made clear, “we will respond forcefully, and we won’t hold by artificial differentiations.”
Thousands of Hezbollah men are reportedly fighting alongside Assad’s troops in Syria.
“Hezbollah works hand-in-glove with the Assad regime,” the official said. “They are fully coordinated with the Syrian regime and with the Iranians, and they cannot pretend to be acting in a vacuum. They cannot pretend that they are not part of an alliance. And they cannot claim that others in the alliance are not responsible.”
Israel responded to four rockets fired from southern Lebanon last week by targeting terrorists bases there. The official explained that Hezbollah was not held to be responsible for that attack