debkafile Exclusive: Nasrallah’s “body parts” speech prompted by internal Hizballah power struggle
Hassan Nasrallah has fallen out with internal security chief Wafik Saffa and replaced the bodyguards who kept him in hiding in the 17 months since the 2006 Lebanon War, debkafile‘s counter-terror sources reveal. The Shiite terrorist chief aimed a double swipe at Saffa – first by appearing in public for the first time with a new team of bodyguards, second by claiming to hold “many body parts” of Israeli soldiers who fell in battle in the 2006 Lebanon war. This claim served to make it impossible for Saffa to continue to represent Hizballah in negotiations for the release of the two Israel kidnapped soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser in the face of the uproar of revulsion Nasrallah’s speech raised in Israel.
Our sources disclose that Nasrallah handpicked his new bodyguards from childhood friends, members of a Beirut Sunni family which converted to Shiah. He then paraded in Beirut under their close protection at the Ashura festival of Sat. Jan. 19, in open defiance of his sacked protector, who confined him to videotaped appearances. If the Iran-backed Hizballah leader prevails in his feud with Saffa, negotiations for the freedom of the two Israeli soldiers, who were snatched from the Israeli side of the border in July 2006, may be deadlocked for some time to come. This would fulfill the third goal of Nasrallah’s ghoulish demagoguery.
The Israel military, while not denying the truth of his claim, declared that all the men who fell in the 2006 Lebanon War were accounted for and laid to rest according to the prescripts of Jewish law.