Hizbollah claims it has only tape of abduction

By Kesava Menon

MANAMA (BAHRAIN) JULY 15. The Hizbollah has added its own twist to the on- going tussle over a videotape between Israel and the United Nations by claiming that it possesses what is probably the only tape of the abduction of three Israeli soldiers.

That is not a matter that concerns India directly. But what should be of greater concern to India is the niggardly manner in which Israeli leaders have refuted the irresponsible and slanderous charges the Israeli media has levelled against the Indian Army.

Maariv, an Israeli paper with a wide circulation, has taken upon itself the task of maligning the Indian Army. The paper does not have a website in English and what is known of its report is culled from the press briefs sent out by the Israel Government Press Office and the news agencies.

A Maariv reporter has claimed that he spoke to an Indian jawan serving with the UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) and that the jawan told him that he and his colleagues had observed the abduction of three Israeli soldiers in south Lebanon last October. If Maariv did have such a conversation, a report should have appeared soon after the incident and it would certainly have generated a greater controversy. There is little to show that this conversation took place in October last year. Had it not taken place then, the reporter would have gone to India to record the conversation. Because 2 Madras, the battalion serving with the UNIFIL then, was rotated back to India by December 2000. It would have made no sense for Maariv to interview a soldier of 5/9 Gorkha, which replaced 2 Madras, to find out what the men of the other battalion had observed a year ago (even assuming that the reporter had the guts to cross the international border into Hizbollah-controlled territory). The Maariv report does not say that its journalist travelled to whichever part of India 2 Madras is posted in now.

According to the excerpts of the Maariv report made available, the Indian jawan told the paper that he and his colleagues had observed the abduction, asked the Hizbollah not to go through with it and felt sad that they were not able to prevent it. (How an Israeli reporter for a Hebrew paper managed such a long conversation with an Indian soldier is another matter.) If this conversation did take place then there is nothing exceptional in it since the jawan's remarks merely bring out the invidious position the UNIFIL finds itself in. Its contingents can do nothing to prevent any sort of attacks from either direction.

The peculiarity of the UNIFIL's mandate precludes the necessity for the Hizbollah to bribe anyone. Why would they waste the ``thousands of dollars'' they are believed to have given to the UNIFIL men when the latter could have done nothing to stop them. Here Maariv very cleverly cites some unidentified ``security- diplomatic source'' as the authenticator of its story. Tied up with its earlier claim about a conversation with an Indian jawan this gives the impression that the soldier told the reporter that his colleagues had taken money, women and alcohol from the Hizbollah.

While such unidentified military men have been cited liberally by the Israeli media there have been few attempts by the Israeli leadership to point out how these wild charges could affect their emerging relationship with India. The Foreign Minister, Mr. Shimon Peres, was the first to point out that Israel did not need to make new enemies by making such wild allegations. The Defence Minister, Mr. Ben Eliezer, has now joined the act and said that Israel is not blaming India. What, one wonders, would be the situation if they were indeed blaming India. These have been just about the only comments from the Israeli side that could amount to a defence of the Indian Army's reputation.

Meanwhile, the U.N. has expanded the inquiry into the videotape affair to include an investigation of the bribery charges. Israeli soldiers and civilians were kidnapped throughout the two decades and more than that their army was in occupation of south Lebanon. It does not appear that the U.N. thought it fit to look into the performance of the UNIFIL units responsible in these areas.

PTI reports from Jerusalem:

Hizbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, on Saturday denied bribing Indian peacekeepers in Lebanon to carry out abduction of the Israeli soldiers.

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