WarSclerotic

BusinessDay – Israel cautious over retaliation after Bulgaria blast.

DAN WILLIAMS

Published: 2012/07/20 09:40:38 AM

 

ISRAEL signalled yesterday it would not hasten into any open conflict with Iran or its Lebanese guerrilla ally, Hezbollah, despite blaming them for a deadly attack on its citizens in Bulgaria.

 

 

 

A suicide bomber wearing a baseball cap and plaid shorts, and with a Michigan driver’s licence, killed eight people on a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Burgas airport, drawing a promise by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “react powerfully” to what he called “Iranian terror”.

 

 

 

Iran denied it was behind Wednesday’s attack at Burgas airport, a popular gateway for tourists visiting the Black Sea coast.

 

 

 

Video surveillance footage showed the bomber was similar in appearance to tourists arriving at the airport, Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said yesterday. The bomber had circled a group of buses — set to take Israeli tourists to a resort near Burgas — for about an hour before the explosion, the footage showed.

 

 

 

The bomber was said to be 36-years-old and had been in the country for between four and seven days before the attack. Yesterday, the airport in Burgas — a city of 200000 people at the centre of a string of seaside resorts — remained closed.

 

 

 

Israel’s allegation, based on suspicions that Iranian and Hezbollah agents have been trying for years to score a lethal strike on its interests abroad, triggered speculation in Israeli media that the Netanyahu government might hit back hard.

 

 

 

Israel has threatened to resort to military force to curb Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme, but Defence Minister Ehud Barak sounded more restrained yesterday about a response to the Bulgarian attack.

 

 

 

Speaking on Israel Radio, he said the country would “do everything possible in order to find those responsible, and those who dispatched them, and punish them” — language that appeared to suggest covert action against individuals.

 

 

 

Israeli President Shimon Peres said on his Facebook page that his country would “take action in every terror nest, worldwide. It has the means to do so, and we are determined to act in this spirit. ”

 

 

 

Israel may be reluctant to cross western partners by rushing into a full-on confrontation that would stretch its military capabilities and possibly draw Iranian escalation against US interests as well as disruptions of the global oil supply.

 

 

 

A clash with Hezbollah, which the Israeli military says has stockpiled up to 80000 rockets in south Lebanon, carries the risk of igniting that frontier at a time when the Netanyahu government is worried about turmoil in neighbouring Syria.

 

 

 

Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli general, played down the prospects of the Bulgaria bombing spilling over into war. “I think that any response, whatever it may be, will not be an immediate response.… It will not be in the form of an air force operation, or strike — certainly not in Iran over this matter, nor in Lebanon.”

 

 

 

Some analysts believe Iran is trying to avenge the assassination of several scientists in its nuclear programme.

 

 

 

Hezbollah has its own scores to settle with Israel. Two years after their 2006 border war, the Lebanese Shiite militia lost its commander, Imad Moughniyeh, to a car bomb in Damascus that it said was the work of Israeli spies, and vowed revenge.

 

 

 

Mr Netanyahu’s national security adviser from 2009 to last year, Uzi Arad, confirmed that Israel killed Moughniyeh — though the country has never formally claimed responsibility. Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio, Mr Arad described the Bulgaria bombing as part of a “dynamic of escalation” but told the Netanyahu government to invest in better intelligence and security.

 

 

 

He said “risk management” was required and that Wednesday’s bloodshed may be an “unavoidable price” of the internal and international pressure building on Iran and its allies.

 

 

 

Reuters

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