Friday, April 19, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
LAST WEEK, this northern section of Israel was rocked by 150 Katyusha rockets fired across the border from Lebanon. The border towns of Kiryat Shmona and Metulla bore the brunt of these attacks.
Heavy snows have covered some of the damage done by 122mm and 240mm Soviet-designed rockets. However, the water from melting snow pours through the hole a rocket made in the Kiryat Shmona bus depot. It hit the concrete roof at high noon as people lined up for their tickets and rides. The explosion wounded 15 people with flying concrete and debris. Despite the interruption, the efficient Israeli bus system was soon back on schedule.
The rocket attacks usually came at night. "They came three times a night with five to nine rockets in a salvo," the city clerk told me. The people of Kiryat Shmona, a city of 20,000 people including 3,000 refugees from Russia and Ethiopia, didn't leave town.
The opening paragraphs in this column weren't written today, this week or even this year. I wrote them from Metulla in February 1992. The column also told of the death of a little Israeli girl who was killed by an incoming rocket when she was running out to a nearby street to greet her father coming home from work.
I have repeated part of that column of four years ago to put what is happening in that area today in the historical perspective it deserves. For years, the Iranian-supplied and Syrian-protected Hezbollah have been sending rockets into Israeli farms and towns along the border of Lebanon. Finally, after years of making peace with enemies like the PLO and being bombed by Hamas terrorists, the Israeli leaders could take no more rockets from Lebanon without striking back. Israeli residents in the north had been brutalized for far too long. It was time to give them more protection.
Now, some press reports treat the Israeli actions as over-reaction and are telling us about the suffering of Lebanese residents. This is true, because sophisticated terrorists like Hezbollah have perfected their system of operating within the social, economic and military structure of the host nation. The killers surround themselves with women, children and noncombatants. Lebanon, controlled by the Syrian army, has become a cozy home for the Iranian-supported terrorists. For this reason, the Israel Defense Forces gave warning to the residents of that area to either get rid of Hezbollah or get out of the area and away from the terrorists.
The pain being felt by the people of northern Israel and southern Lebanon can be stopped by the Hezbollah. It's obvious that outfit will only stop their killing when they are killed. Less than a month ago, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah announced the latest attacks against Israel are to be "the crowning glory of the next phase in the struggle."
Who can do something about forcing the Hezbollah to stop their attacks so the Mideast peace process can move forward? His name is Hafez al-Assad, the man who rules Syria and Lebanon with an iron fist. Assad, a skilled butcher of his people, sits and smiles as the Hezbollah go about their bloody business. In a matter of months, the Syrian army could drive Hezbollah from its midst and force them to give up their command centers in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley. Without Assad's support and protection, Hezbollah couldn't function and continue spraying Israel with rockets.
Don't for a minute believe that Assad couldn't control the 1,000 Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. During a military briefing on Assad's Syrian forces, I made the following notes a few years ago:
* Seven tank divisions.
* Three mechanized divisions.
* One commando division.
* Eight independent commando regiments, made up of 95 percent regular military, as compared to Israel's forces of 10 percent regulars.
* Also listed are 59 Syrian surface-to-surface missile launchers, with 600 missiles, of which 100 have chemical warheads; 302 combat helicopters, 698 combat aircraft, including the latest Soviet MiG 29s; 4,508 tanks, including the 1,150 Soviet T-72s; 4,158 armored personnel carriers; 201 self-propelled long-range artillery pieces; plus 1,774 towed guns; and 3,750 anti-aircraft guns.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher should inform Assad that it's time for him to make a move if peace is to become a reality in the Middle East. There's better than an even chance that Assad, like his catspaw Hezbollah, doesn't want a true peace.
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