MEMRI has the transcript of an Al-Jazeera interview with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in which he states that the Lebanese government explicitly knew that Hezbollah would invade Israel and abduct Israeli soldiers. This undercuts the depiction of Lebanon as a helpless victim in some degree:

Interviewer: "Did you inform them that you were about to abduct Israeli soldiers?"

Hassan Nasrallah: "I told them that we must resolve the issue of the prisoners, and that the only way to resolve it is by abducting Israeli soldiers."

Interviewer: "Did you say this clearly?"

Hassan Nasrallah: "Yes, and nobody said to me: 'No, you are not allowed to abduct Israeli soldiers.' Even if they had told me not to... I'm not defending myself here. I said that we would abduct Israeli soldiers, in meetings with some of the main political leaders in the country. I don't want to mention names now, but when the time comes to settle accounts, I will. They asked: 'If this happens, will the issue of the prisoners be over and done with?' I said that it was logical that it would. And I'm telling you, our estimation was not mistaken. I'm not exaggerating. Anywhere in the world – show me a country, show me an army, show me a war, in which two soldiers, or even civilian hostages, were abducted, and a war was waged against a country – and all for two soldiers. This has never happened throughout history, and even Israel has never done such a thing."

This revelation paints the Saniora government more as an accomplice before the fact than as a shocked bystander. If Nasrallah told the truth, not only did the Lebanese government know of the operation and did nothing to prevent it -- not even by simply disagreeing with it -- they actively encouraged it in order to get Lebanese prisoners sprung from Israeli jails, including a murderer of a four-year-old girl.

That puts the Israeli counteroffensive in much clearer context.

On another note, this shows how badly Nasrallah miscalculated his operation. Prior to this in the transcript, Nasrallah noted that the Arab disapproval shocked him, especially when it did not come with denunciations of Israel. Nasrallah said he would be satisfied if other Arabs condemned both the "hangman and the victim"; Nasrallah sees Hezbollah as the victim, of course.

If so, then they are victims of Nasrallah's foolishness. Nasrallah complains that no one ever started a war over the abduction of two soldiers, but sovereign nations have rarely if ever committed such an act. That's the entire point, one Nasrallah missed entirely. Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran misunderstood the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a surrender to Islamofascist terrorism, one of the most spectacular cases of believing one's own press in recent history. Israel pulled back so that they could treat any provocations from Gaza as acts of war and to get Jews out of the line of fire. Had they truly understood the situation, the Islamists would have known that a border raid and abduction (and the deaths of eight other soldiers) would get a singularly harsh response.

The entire interview features Nasrallah as somewhat nonplussed that the Israelis would not understand that stealing soldiers is just a bargaining tactic for Islamists. Nasrallah and Lebanon just discovered that Israelis react to acts of war by conducting a real war in return. The clueless Nasrallah had better start learning something about his enemy before provoking any further responses.

Hot Air has the actual visual, and Michael van der Galien has more thoughts at TMV.

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