Hizballah fires rocket toward Israeli Metula, calls up reserves, enters Damascus

DEBKAfile Special Report May 27, 2013, 12:37 PM (IDT)

Tags:  Hizballah attacks,  Metula,  Israel,  Hassan Nasrallah,  Bashar Assad,  Binyamin Netanyahu,  Damascus,

Hassan Nasrallah stokes the Damascus inferno

Residents of Israel’s northernmost town of Metula were roused before dawn Monday, May 27 by an exploding rocket fired from the Lebanese town of Marjayoun about 10 kilometers north of the border. It landed on open ground, causing no casualties or damage. debkafile’s military sources report: Just 48 hours after Hassan Nasrallah’s war speech, Hizballah, Iran’s proxy, had joined the war of attrition President Assad has directed against Israel from the Golan.

The IDF has so far made no mention of the widely reported rocket attack although Lebanese media said an Israeli drone was hovering over the Marjayoun area.

Metula was attacked the day after three Grad missiles were fired from a point east of Mt Lebanon to explode in the Hizballah-controlled Dahiya district of Beirut, injuring five people and causing some damage.

It was fired by local Sunni elements sympathetic to the Syrian rebels. The Shiite Hizballah decided to retaliate against northern Israel – for a reason. It made clear that the position laid out by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon that “Israel is not involved in the Syrian war” is not reciprocated either by Syrian President Bashar Assad or Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Nasrallah’s strategy in the face of domestic criticism of his heavy military commitment to Assad is to demonstrate that the troops he sent to fight in the Shiite-Sunni conflict raging in Syria are in fact waging war on the common enemy, the Jewish state.

This rocket against Metula was also intended to direct attention away from the massive ongoing boost of the Lebanese terrorist group’s military contingents fighting in Syria. Sunday and early Monday, another 2,000 elite Hizballah combatants poured into Syria from Lebanon to augment the 5,000-6,000 already present there.

The new arrivals were transferred straight to the battlefront in south Damascus. Rebel forces report they are under assault by a combined force of Lebanese Hizballah and Iraqi Shiite fighters.

Neither the United States nor Israel or Turkey has raised a finger to block this dangerous influx of Hizballah fighting forces into Syria although it is strongly tipping the scales of war in Assad’s favor.

Sunday overnight, Hizballah secretly ordered the call-up of reserves to reinforce its strength for fighting on three active fronts, Syria, Israel and opponents at home. Its agents went around Hizballah centers in towns and villages across Lebanon with orders for members to report for duty at once.