Beirut, NU Online
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Friday that he had been "happy" to hear that Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, who led last summer’s war with his Shiite militant group, had resigned.

"When I heard the news, I was happy," Nasrallah said in an interview broadcast by his movement’s Al-Manar television.

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We were expecting this moment. Since the end of the war we had been expecting Halutz to resign and (Defence Minister Amir) Peretz and (Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert to follow him. "Any of them that don’t resign will be forced out," he crowed. “It’s the first war that Israel has lost and in which it’s failed to achieve its objectives."

Halutz presented his resignation Tuesday amid mounting pressure in Israel for both his own departure and that of his political masters following the perceived failings in the conduct of the war.

Hezbollah supporters celebrated the news by sending fireworks into the night sky over Beirut. The July-August conflict, launched after Hezbollah fighters seized two soldiers in a deadly cross-border raid, failed to achieve either of its stated goals of freeing the two soldiers and stopping Hezbollah rocket fire. (ant/mad)