Amidst rising worries again about Hezbollah’s rocket arsenal a strange thing happened last month. On 14 July a series of explosions occurred in the village of Khirbat Slim, about 10 miles north of the Israel/Lebanon border, in the area under UN control. Most analysts agree that the most likely cause was that an illegal store of Hezbollah munitions started to detonate. The UNIFIL forces went to investigate as this would have been a violation of UN Resolution 1701 but were driven off by locals throwing stones (aka Hezbollah, I would think). UNIFIL are not renowned for being able to be particularly forceful with either (or any) side in the region. To be fair, Hezbollah allege that the munitions were left there by the Israelis in 2006, but frankly that’s not very credible. Actually to be absolutely fair, the Lebanese government Foreign Ministry allege that the munitions were left there by the Israelis… but the Lebanese Foreign Minister is from Hezbollah, so make of that what you will. One interesting source suggests that some sort of munitions were actually being manufactured there… which makes me think it could have been an IED manufacturing facility.

What intrigues me is what was the cause of the explosion? Poor storage? Possibly. Hezbollah munitions or Israeli munitions collected by Hezbollah or an Israeli dump from 2006? Do you think the IDF knew about the store? You would think so, given their ISR efforts, but they did misread a lot of well camouflaged Hezbollah defensive positions and rocket launch sites in 2006. Would the IDF or one of its actors be able to initiate an accidental explosion? Who benefits? Do you think there are other munition stores in the UNIFIL controlled area? Will UNIFIL do anything about it? Are UNIFIL actually geared up to search for munitions hidden in that territory? (I doubt it) Do you think politics in Iran is getting messy and someone might want attention focused elsewhere in coming months? If it all kicks off could the Israelis rein themselves in from taking on Iran if they have 10,000 Iranian missiles being sent to them via Hezbollah? Or are Hezbollah deterring Israel from pre-emptively hitting Iran?

All is never quite as it seems in that neck of the woods. I have struggled to find a link to a news story that takes a rational view of all the conflicting claims, propaganda and bull**** – here’s the best I could find.