PERES: After two weeks, I forgot everything. We are at war and have to be united. I’m not going to make an account of who was right and who was wrong.
We are using more ground forces and have reduced the bombing.
Not their strength but the strangeness of this operation. Nobody understands why they started to attack, what the purpose of the attack was and why they are using so many rockets and missiles. We knew they had them but were surprised they used them.
If the ceasefire is just a declaration, it will remain a piece of paper. Somebody must make sure that Hizbullah does not return to the south of Lebanon.
They are behind it. [Javier] Solana [secretary-general of the European Union] visited Tehran on July 11 and got a totally negative response [on restraining their nuclear program], and Hizbullah struck [Israel] on the 12th of July.
What Israel has to show is a great performance of the people. We never experienced having 100 to 150 missiles and rockets every night falling at random. And over a million people living in the shelters, keeping [up] their morale. It’s quite a demonstration of unity and determination. I think in spite of everything, we are weakening Hizbullah. It’s not a confrontation with an army, so we can’t have a victory in a military sense. I see it as three confrontations: one is an attempt to destroy Israel … The second is about Lebanon … They want to de-Lebanize Lebanon–to transform it from a multicultural country into a Shiite country under the spell of the Iranians. And the third–the real confrontation–is between the Arabs and the Iranians for the hegemony of the Middle East. It’s not a surprise that countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan stood up openly against Hizbullah.
They may have changed their rhetoric, but I don’t think they have changed their minds.
No, we used air power and ground power for different reasons. We used the air power to bomb the headquarters of Hizbullah. There was a headquarters–a complex of buildings–of Hizbullah in Beirut, and we decided to bomb it. And then we decided to destroy their communication systems. Now we are using ground forces because they hide weapons in private homes and villages.
I want to achieve the perception, the conviction that you cannot bombard Israel. We shall not permit Hizbullah to come back to [the] southern border between Israel and Lebanon. The second is to stop the firing of missiles and rockets. The third is to release our two soldiers that were taken hostage. And the fourth is to get control over their arsenal of rockets and missiles.
We bombed the road from Syria to Lebanon and the runways [at Beirut international airport] so Iranian planes will not bring in resupplies
Yes, but they can be bombed again.
In the long run, we want to see Lebanon governed by Lebanese. We want the Lebanese Army to stop being an army that doesn’t participate in the defense of its country. They are 80,000 soldiers, and they will be thickened by an international force.
But they are not the best army in the Middle East. Since the Russians stopped supplying them with modern arms, they have an obsolescent arsenal of weapons. The Syrians cannot fight alone. They need an ally. They cannot fight without Egypt, but Egypt doesn’t want to fight.
We could do without it, yes. It’s building and destroying [Hizbullah] at the same time. What are they going to achieve–prestige, applause?
I think this is a matter of weeks and not months. I think that Hizbullah is beginning to feel the Israeli action. They’ve lost two of their six senior commanders. They have paid heavily.
