Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser buried, Lebanon celebrations continue

The funerals of IDF reserve soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, whose deaths at the hand of Hezbollah marked the beginning of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, took place yesterday.  Goldwasser was buried in the military cemetery at his hometown of Nahariya, and Regev was buried in the military cemetery in Haifa, near his hometown of Kiryat Motzkin. The burial of the two fallen soldiers is being seen by many in Israel as the last act of the Second Lebanon War.

In Lebanon, meanwhile, celebrations continued for the release of child murderer Samir Kuntar and the four Hezbollah men captured in 2006. At a ceremony welcoming him back to his home village of Aaley yesterday, Kuntar reiterated his commitment to the destruction of Israel, and expressed his personal desire to take part in further terrorist operations.

The prisoner exchange is being seen in Lebanon as offering a boost to Hezbollah. The movement has now declared that it is preparing what it terms a strategy of ‘national defence.' This is expected to mean a decline in focus on the issue of the Shebaa farms area, and instead a focusing on the matter of IDF overflights over Lebanese airspace. Such flights are regularly conducted by the IDF for the purpose of gathering intelligence. Some analysts have suggested that Hezbollah may attempt to acquire anti-aircraft weaponry in the coming period in order to try to strike at Israeli planes.

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