BINT JBEIL, Lebanon: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted the demise of arch-foe Israel Thursday from inside a Hezbollah stronghold in south Lebanon, just miles from the border of the Jewish state. “The whole world knows that the Zionists are going to disappear,” he said to thunderous applause before a frenzied crowd in Hezbollah's bastion of Bint Jbeil, some four kilometers from the Israeli border. “The occupying Zionists today have no choice but to accept reality and go back to their countries of origin,” he added. Israel's prime minister brushed off the hardliner's comments. “The best response to the hateful verbal aggression from across the border was given here 62 years ago,” Benjamin Netanyahu said in Tel Aviv, referring to Israel's creation in 1948. In Bint Jbeil, thousands of men, women and children crammed into an outdoor stadium and onto rooftops waving Iranian, Lebanese and Hezbollah flags and cheering the hardliner whose two-day official visit has been denounced by the United States and Israel as a threat to regional stability. “Bint Jbeil is alive and well,” Ahmadinejad told the crowd. “I salute you, people of the resistance. You are a solid mountain. We are proud of you and will remain forever by your side.” Bint Jbeil was flattened during Israel's devastating summer 2006 war with the Shiite Hezbollah, considered a proxy of Iran. His visit to the south brought Ahmadinejad the closest he has ever been to Israel and was seen as a joint show of defiance with Hezbollah. Ahmadinejad later went to Qana, which earned a grim place in history after being targeted by Israeli shelling that killed 105 civilians who had sought shelter at a UN base in 1996 during the Jewish state's “Grapes of Wrath” offensive on Lebanon. The village was again the site of tragedy when a shelter collapsed on dozens of people, including disabled children, during Israeli strikes at the height of the month-long 2006 war. Ahmadinejad laid a wreath at a memorial for victims of the 1996 strikes and also paid homage to the people of Qana. Israeli officials have slammed Ahmadinejad's visit as a sign that Lebanon had “joined the axis of extremist states,” while the United States called it a “provocation.” The visit has underscored Iran's reach in Lebanon through Hezbollah, the country's most powerful military and political force. But it has also drawn criticism from the pro-Western parliamentary majority, who see it as an attempt to turn Lebanon into “an Iranian base on the Mediterranean.” – Agence France
