a bait for Nasrallah in Beirut? – New English Review

By Lev Tsitrin

Many decades ago, when I was a ten-year-old Soviet child, I read an exciting story about the Italian police arresting a major mafia boss. After their painstaking detective work identified his hideout, police had to make sure he was home when they came to arrest him. Afraid to warn him by heavily patrolling the neighborhood, they asked the local TV station to air a documentary about his bloody exploits, assuming he wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to kill himself again on the screen – and that it would be the home of watch. They were right: when the heavily armed police struck, he was exactly where they wanted him: in the middle of the living room, in front of the television.

That long-forgotten story came back to mind when I read that the attack on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut took place an hour after Netanyahu’s speech at the UN.

I wonder: was there a link? As I write this, no information is available about who was hit in the attack – only about who the intended target was: Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah. Indeed, it is difficult to believe that Israelis would have bombed a large apartment complex that concealed the command center built beneath it if it were not in the hope of killing a very senior figure. The question is: How would they know that Nasrallah – who is notoriously cautious and whose whereabouts are Hezbollah’s super-hyper top secret – was there?

Or were the Israelis hoping to lure him to Hezbollah’s headquarters, given that there was indeed an urgent need to discuss the latest situation, to assess the extent of the blows inflicted by Hezbollah in the past two weeks, and to To weigh French interests? US proposal for a three-week ceasefire? The meeting had to take place – and it had to happen in person, as Hezbollah’s electronic communications were unreliable and most likely breached by Israel. So why not combine these things with watching Netanyahu talk on a big screen at the UN, exchanging impressions and ideas with the surviving lieutenants to better articulate Hezbollah’s response?

Of course, there were plenty of reasons for Netanyahu to be in New York other than luring Nasrallah to Hezbollah headquarters – he needed to explain Israel’s position to the world. But while this sounds insanely conspiratorial – as I would be the first to admit – liquidating Nasrallah along with what remains of Hezboullah’s top echelon would have been worth the cross-ocean journey during the war alone. What reinforces such an impression of purpose is that Netanyahu does not stay for further meetings, but heads straight back home, instead of chatting with other world leaders, as is always done during the week of the UN General Assembly.

There is definitely a war to be fought and won. But I wonder if Netanyahu’s speech in New York was also part of that war – and not just the one in which he wanted to gain some sympathy for his country by telling the Israeli side of the story to the world – but also one of Israel’s had to lure main enemies out of hiding: so that he could meet his downfall, just as his mafia predecessor did many decades ago.