Underneath Lebanon, Israel sees hidden battlefield

MOUNT ADIR, Israel (AP) - With tensions mounting along their shared border, Israel's military says Hezbollah is moving fighters and weapons into the villages of south Lebanon, building up a secret network of arms warehouses, bunkers and command posts in preparation for war.

The Israeli military has begun releasing detailed information about what it calls Hezbollah's new border deployment, four years after a cross-border raid by its guerrillas triggered a 34-day war.

A reminder of the volatility came on August 3, when Lebanese troops fired at Israeli soldiers clearing brush on their side of the border. One Israeli officer was killed, another badly wounded, and a retaliatory helicopter strike killed two Lebanese soldiers and a reporter.

Hezbollah, which is armed by Iran and Syria and is more powerful than the Lebanese military, stayed out of the Aug. 3 fight. But its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, threatened that he would intervene next time. He has also said that if war breaks out again his forces will fire rockets into Tel Aviv.

Neither side has signaled that another war is imminent, but the Israelis' unusual openness about what they claim to know of Hezbollah's preparations seems to have two goals: to show the reach of their intelligence, and to stake their claim that if another war breaks out and many civilians die, it will be because Hezbollah placed its armaments and fighters in their midst.

Israel's military says Hezbollah has changed strategy since the last war, moving most of its fighters and weapons from wooded rural areas into villages.

It says the aim is to avoid detection and use to civilians for cover if war erupts.

The military says all of this exists under the nose of 12,000 international peacekeepers who, by their own count, conduct up to 340 patrols a day in south Lebanon but are hobbled by a hostile population and rules preventing them from searching private property.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Mount Adir, a hill overlooking the border, an officer from the military's Northern Command pointed through the summer haze at the village of Aita al-Shaab.

One of its southernmost buildings, a white structure housing mentally handicapped children, is a Hezbollah lookout post, the officer said. Several guerrilla command posts are in civilian buildings in the center of Aita al-Shaab, she said, with several dozen fighters able to move among houses through underground tunnels. The military would not allow her name to be used because of the sensitivity of her job.

The village also houses a network of warehouses holding arms trucked in from Iran via Syria, she said, some in stand-alone structures and some in smaller stashes in garages, basements and buried under backyards.

The officer said the guerrillas now have 5,000 fighters operating in the buffer zone between the border and the Litani River - a strip ranging from 5 kilometers to 30 kilometers (3 miles to 18 miles) wide - which is supposed to be free of militant activity under the 2006 cease-fire. In late 2009, Nasrallah said Hezbollah's rocket arsenal stood at 30,000. Israel says it's now about 40,000.