Hezbollah Rearms, Raising Risk of Reigniting War With Israel (Janine Zacharia)

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Six months after a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia is rearming, raising the specter that even a small border skirmish might trigger another war.

By Janine Zacharia

March 2 (Bloomberg) -- Six months after a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia is rearming, raising the specter that even a small border skirmish might trigger another war.

While Hezbollah militiamen no longer operate at the border fence, the militant Islamic group has planted its yellow flags with green insignia along the border. Southern Lebanon, once Hezbollah's stronghold, is now patrolled by 20,000 United Nations peacekeepers and Lebanese troops under a cease-fire struck Aug. 14 after the 33-day war.

The UN troops don't patrol the border with Syria, through which Israeli officials say new arms and equipment -- including Katyusha rockets, Russian-made anti-tank missiles and night- vision goggles -- are flowing, adding to the arsenal of an estimated 8,000 rockets Hezbollah retained at the end of the conflict.

``The big problem today is that the smuggling of weapons between Syria and Lebanon didn't stop,'' Lieutenant Colonel Guy Hazut, of the Israeli army's 91st division, said in an interview along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Hassan Nasrallah, 46, Hezbollah's leader, said in a Feb. 3 interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper that his militia is receiving a fresh supply of money and weapons from Iran, the group's chief patron. Hezbollah is classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S.