Ayalon: Attacks on Israeli targets abroad will be blamed on Hezbollah

Israel will hold Hezbollah responsible for any attack on Israeli citizens or diplomats, deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon warned yesterday during a conversation with Haaretz.

Speaking in response to the news of the arrest of a terrorist cell in Egypt that had planned to assassinate Israel's ambassador there, Shlomo Cohen, and attack the embassy building in Cairo, Ayalon said that "if an Israeli diplomat or Israeli citizen is harmed abroad, Hezbollah will suffer the consequences."

Israel's former ambassador to Washington also said that the government of Lebanon will also be held directly responsible for any attack that Hezbollah might carry out. "They will not be able to remain free of responsibility," he said.

"There is a dangerous trend in which global jihad groups, like the cell in Egypt, and also Hezbollah, are posing a threat to Israeli diplomats and citizens abroad," Ayalon told Haaretz.

The plans by the Egyptian cell to carry out an attack against Israel's ambassador in Egypt were not part of a Hezbollah initiative, according to intelligence information, and are believed to have been part of a global jihadist network involving Sunni extremists in Egypt and Iraq.

A source at the National Security Council's Counter Terrorism Bureau, which follows developments on terrorist trends and warns Israeli citizens on possible threats against them, says that the cell in Egypt had been arrested several months ago by local security forces and that Israel had been updated on the details of the case.

At the bureau they noted yesterday that the high alert declared following the assassination of the Hezbollah terrorist mastermind, Imad Mughniyah in Damascus last year, and for which Hezbollah holds Israel responsible, has remained.

A source at the Counter Terrorism Bureau said that there are no specific warnings for plans by Hezbollah to carry out attacks against Israelis abroad, "only fragments of general information and early indications of planning."

Since the assassination of Mughniyah, for which Israel has not confirmed any responsibility, there have been a number of specific alerts on Hezbollah reprisal attacks, such as concerns about plans to kidnap Israeli businessmen in Africa or an attack against Israel's embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan, according to foreign news reports.

Israeli assessments of the situation point to interest from Hezbollah to intensify tensions along the northern border in view of its failure to achieve the kind of victory it had anticipated during the recent elections to Lebanon's parliament. The difficulties in establishing the sort of coalition government that the militant Shi'ite group wants in Lebanon is an added impetus for "exporting" the domestic stalemate onto Israel.

A senior political source told Haaretz that Hezbollah is "flexing its muscles" in order to show groups inside Lebanon that failure to include it in the coalition with the conditions it has set will have negative repercussions on the country.

Meanwhile the high alert level that has been declared at Israel's diplomatic missions abroad since the Mughniyah assassination has made the activities of Israeli diplomats more difficult.

"Israel's ambassadors have become Prisoners of Zion," a senior ambassador who is serving in a European country quipped, referring to Jews in what was then the Soviet Union who were prevented from immigrating to Israel.