"Hezbollah
did not intend to take control... If it had wanted to, it could have
done it," Major General Amos Yadlin said in an interview with the
Haaretz newspaper.
Lebanon
was rocked last week by the worst sectarian violence since the end of
the 1975-1990 civil war, which saw Hezbollah fighters seize mainly
Muslim west Beirut, overrunning its pro-government rivals.
But
Yadlin said Hezbollah did not want to follow the example of the
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which seized power in the Gaza
Strip in June by ousting the forces of moderate Palestinian president
Mahmud Abbas.
Hezbollah,
a Shiite Muslim movement formed after Israel's large-scale invasion of
Lebanon in 1982, "understands that if it took power it would have to
assume responsibility and expose its numerous weak points," he said.
"Hezbollah proved that it was the strongest power in Lebanon... stronger than the Lebanese army."
He
said Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, continued to pose a
"significant" threat to Israel as its rockets could reach a large part
of Israeli territory.
During the
34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in 2006 that
devastated much of Lebanon, the Shiite militant group fired 4,000
rockets into northern Israel.
