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Israel Prepares for Next War With Hezbollah

The Israel Defense Forces is watching with concern as Hezbollah improves its military capabilities in Syria.
An Israeli soldier cleans the barrel of a tank near the border with Syria in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights July 17, 2013. Syria's civil war has brought an end to decades of calm on the Golan Heights, a strip of land which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Battles between rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syrian villages nearby are being watched intensely by Israel's military. REUTERS/Baz Ratner (POLITICS MILITARY TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY) - RTX11P94
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One of the more positive outcomes of the Second Lebanon War that raged between Israel and Hezbollah about seven years ago in 2006 is the peace and quiet that followed it. This was not just a military quiet, in view of the fact that Hezbollah has not fired so much as a single Katyusha rocket, a bullet or even a BB or cap gun. We’re talking about verbal quiet, as well.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, the blustery leader of the Shiite Lebanese organization, has earned himself quite a reputation all over the world for his thunderous speeches, highly detailed threats and promises of a bitter fate for the Jewish state that he spewed at breakneck speed. What evolved in Israel, on the other hand, was a subculture of listening to these bizarre speeches. They were always aired live during prime-time newscasts with simultaneous interpreting by popular experts on Arab affairs such as Ehud Yaari on Channel 2, Zvika Yehezkeli on Channel 10 and Oded Granot on Channel 1.

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