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Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday warned fellow Arabs to leave the Israeli port city of Haifa. (AP file)
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| By Associated Press August 10, 2006 |
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Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Wednesday warned fellow Arabs to leave the Israeli port city of Haifa so the guerrilla organization could step up attacks knowing only Jewish blood would be shed.
"I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to your wounded. I call you to leave this city. I hope you do this. ... Please leave so we don't shed your blood, which is our blood," he said in a taped television address carried on virtually all major television channels in the region.
In his first comments since the U.S.-French draft U.N. cease-fire resolution was unveiled on Sunday, the Shiite cleric gave a deeply negative assessment of the plan.
"The least we can describe this (draft resolution) is as unfair and unjust. It has given Israel more than it wanted and more than it was looking for," he said.
He backed the Lebanese government's own peace package and urged Beirut not to buckle under U.S. pressure.
Nasrallah also heaped criticism on Assistant U.S. Secretary of State David Welch for visiting Beirut Wednesday as the Israel's Security Cabinet decided to expand the ground offensive in southern Lebanon.
"We will be waiting for you at every village, at every valley. Thousands of courageous holy warriors are waiting for you," he said.
Welch's visit to the Lebanese capital, he said, was designed "to terrify the government and the Lebanese to pressure them to accept old-new conditions."
He said the Americans were trying to undermine any attempt at a solution that takes into consideration Lebanese demands and were attempting "to impose the conditions and the interests of Israel at the expense of Lebanon."
"I call for political will and steadfastness and not to submit to American pressures and dictates."
For his part, he said the guerrillas would not falter. "Will keep fighting to the last shot."
Nasrallah also gloated that his fighters had already won the conflict by having put up such a fierce fight through the 29-day Israeli onslaught that began after guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border mission.
"On the battlefield, we remain steadfast and that in itself is a victory for the resistance, and defeat for the enemy," he said.
In a major shift in the Hezbollah position, Nasrallah said the militant organization was solidly behind a Lebanese government plan to deploy 15,000 soldiers in south Lebanon once a cease-fire is reached and Israel pulls out its forces.
"In the past we used to oppose or not agree on deployment of the army at the borders ... because we were concerned about the army. ... We agree on deployment of the army, but do not hide our fear for it," Nasrallah said.
The cleric also rejected a proposed international peacekeeping force for south Lebanon.
"This (the Lebanese army deployment) is the better and more convenient alternative than deployment of international troops. We don't know whose orders they will be taking," he said.
Lebanon has been pushing to amend the U.S.-French proposal to require that Israeli withdraw its troops from the south immediately after a cease-fire is agreed. But Welch told the Prime Minister Fuad Saniora that Israel had rejected the demand.
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