Israel claims seized arms bound for Lebanon
Last Updated: Wednesday, November 4, 2009 | 1:58 PM ET
CBC News
Israeli naval commandos seized a ship Wednesday that defence officials said was carrying hundreds of tons of missiles, rockets and anti-tank weapons from Iran to Lebanese Hezbollah militia.
The pre-dawn seizure near Cyprus was the second major arms seizure Israel has claimed and the first since 2002, when Israeli forces stormed a freighter on the Red Sea and confiscated what the military said was 50 tonnes of missiles, mortars, rifles and ammunition headed for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
The arms were stashed on a commercial vessel operating as an aid ship, flying an Antigua flag and captained by a Polish citizen, according to Israeli defence officials who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The ship, the Francop, was towed to the southern Israeli port of Ashdod, where the weapons were unloaded. An employee of the company that operates the vessel — Cyprus-based United Feeder Services — said they did not know what was inside the containers or where the cargo originated.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak called the interception "another success against the relentless attempts to smuggle weapons to bolster terrorist elements threatening Israel's security," while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the arms supply "was intended to hit Israeli cities."
Israeli defence officials said an Iranian document was found on board showing that the arms shipment originated from Iran, although the paper was not shown to reporters.
"It's a cargo certificate that shows that it was from a port in Iran," military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich said. "All the cargo certificates are stamped at the ports of origin, and this one was stamped at an Iranian port."
Military officials offered no evidence to support the claim the shipment was meant for Hezbollah, however.
Rear Admiral Roni Ben-Yehuda told a briefing that "hundreds of tons" of weapons were found on the ship, giving a much higher estimate than an earlier one of more than 60 tons.
Report of rocket launch
The Lebanon-Israel border has been relatively quiet since Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in the summer of 2006, but Israel has warned in the past they suspected Hezbollah fighters were rearming and now possess some 40,000 rockets.
The arms seizure announcement comes a day after Israel's military intelligence chief said Palestinian militants in Gaza test-fired an Iranian rocket able to reach Tel Aviv.
Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee that the rocket was launched in recent days and could fly 60 kilometres, about 20 km further than previous rockets launched from Gaza. The military has not publicly released clear evidence proving Iranian involvement.
Hamas called the rocket claim a "fabrication" and said Israel was trying to sway international opinion against the Islamic group ahead of a meeting on Wednesday of the UN General Assembly, which is set to discuss a controversial report on war crimes committed during last December's winter war.
UN to discuss Gaza war report
Former South African judge Richard Goldstone was commissioned to write the report by the UN Human Rights Council, which Israel perceives as hostile.
The 575-page Goldstone report accuses both Israelis and Palestinians of war crimes during the conflict from Dec. 27, 2008 to Jan. 18, 2009 that resulted in almost 1,400 Palestinian and 13 Israeli deaths.
It concluded that Israel used disproportionate force, deliberately targeted civilians, used Palestinians as human shields and destroyed civilian infrastructure during its incursion into the Gaza Strip to root out Palestinian rocket squads.
It also accused Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, of deliberately targeting civilians and trying to spread terror through rocket attacks on southern Israel.
Both sides of the conflict have rejected the war crimes allegations found in the report.
On Tuesday the U.S. House of Representatives condemned the report as unfair to Israel, with 344 of 380 legislators approving a non-binding resolution calling the report "irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy."
Canada's federal government has also condemned the report as biased, with Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Peter Kent saying in the House of Commons in September that the UN Human Rights Council "pre-emptively assumed Israel's culpability."
With files from The Associated Press
