Siniora asks for details on investigation into Mughniyeh killing

The assassination of Imad Mughniyah may mark the beginning of a new era in the region: an era of total confrontation with no boundaries and no taboos. The reaction of Hizbullah to the assassination of its military chief of staff was never going to be mild, and the Israelis knew that. They knew that the response would be painful and still they went for it. Did they believe that denying responsibility would confuse the resistance and prevent it from retaliating? Surely not; rather, they want the possibility of considering any Hizbullah strike as an unprovoked act of aggression.

Hizbullah, however, is likely to respond using the same tactic; that is, hitting hard and not claiming responsibility. Indeed, any response to the assassination of Mughniyah can by no means be a classical response. The resistance cannot respond by launching missiles or firing on a tank. A proper response, from the perspective of the resistance, can only be to eliminate an Israeli personality of the same stature of Mughniyah. As Sayed Hassan Nasrallah pointed out in his latest speech, the rules of the game, which confined the Arab-Israeli confrontation to the spheres of Lebanese and occupied Palestinian territories, have been breached by the Israelis. In Nasrallah's words, "If you want this kind of open war, then let it be an open war."

Killing Mughniyah does not necessary mean that Israel wants "this kind of open war", because the Zionists realise very well that Hizbullah has the logistical and organisational structure to hit them hard anywhere, and they are not overly keen on indulging in a bloody cycle of tit-for-tat assassinations. Hizbullah, for its part, is also not in favour of such a scenario, preferring to confine its activities to politics and classical resistance based on guerrilla tactics. However, when Israel killed Mughniyah in Syria it gave Hizbullah licence, as well as an imperative, to respond, at least once, outside of the usual frame of the conflict. That one hit is very likely to come in an Arab country, maybe a country that is known to support Mossad activities and even to lend the services of its own security apparatus to the Israelis regularly.

After its response is executed, Hizbullah expects Israel to go back to the traditional rules of the conflict. This means that any reaction or retaliation for the loss that Israel will suffer -- and they as well as we know that this loss is coming -- will be a declaration of classical war whether limited or open. If the Israelis chose to opt for another assassination outside of Lebanon's borders, we could consider that we have entered a time of open war with the whole world as its theatre of operation.

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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/885/op24.htm