London, February 10: Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri voiced concern about Israeli threats and escalating military activity in a BBC interview broadcast Wednesday.
“We hear a lot of Israeli threats day in and day out, and not only threats,” Hariri told the British broadcaster.
“We see what’s happening on the ground and in our airspace and what’s happening all the time during the past two months – every day we have Israeli planes entering Lebanese airspace.
“This is something that is escalating, and this is something that is really dangerous,” said the prime minister.
Hariri warned Israel not to count on Lebanon, whose politics is highly factious, remaining divided in case of an attack.
“I think they’re betting that there might be some division in Lebanon, if there is a war against us,” said the prime minister.
“Well, there won’t be a division in Lebanon. We will stand against Israel. We will stand with our own people.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to ease tensions on Sunday, saying Israel wants peace with all of its neighbours, but had last week accused Beirut of allowing Hezbollah to smuggle weapons into Lebanon in “blatant violation” of the UN resolution which ended the 2006 war.
Israel waged a bloody 34-day war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 after Hezbollah fighters seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid that aimed to free Lebanese soldiers from Israeli prisons. The bodies of the soldiers were returned in a prisoner swap.
The war claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers.
The war also damaged the reputation of Israel’s military.
Hezbollah, originally a resistance group formed to counter an Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, had forced the Israeli military out of Lebanon in 2000. Israel, however, continues to occupy the Lebanese Shabaa Farms.
Israeli flights over Lebanon occur on an almost daily basis and are in breach of UN Security Council resolution 1710, which in August 2006 ended the war.
—Agencies