MIDDLE EAST: Hizbullah will not only take war to Haifa, but "beyond Haifa, and beyond, beyond Haifa", its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said in a televised speech last week - and some experts are prepared to believe him.
"When they say things, they mean it. They don't bluff," said Nicholas Noe, a Cambridge University researcher who is editing a book of Mr Nasrallah's speeches.
Mr Nasrallah's address on Friday ended with the news that Hizbullah had hit an Israeli naval vessel off the Lebanese coast, which might be relatively insignificant in military terms, but had a massive psychological impact.
Few experts doubt the militant Shia organisation's standing. Mark Perry of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum said in a recent interview with Prospect magazine: "Hizbullah is the second or third most competent military force in the region, after Israel and Iran."
Unusually, Hizbullah makes a habit of announcing what it intends to do in advance. It said it was planning to capture Israeli soldiers, and did so. It also stated openly, before the latest conflict began, that it had 12,000 rockets - more than 700 of which have now been fired. Most experts believe the real figure is higher.
Most of the rockets are 107mm and 122mm Katyushas with a short range, but, according to Israeli sources, Hizbullah also has Fajr-3 missiles with a 40-km range and Fajr-5 rockets which can reach 72 km.
The Hizbullah television station recently broadcast pictures of new, long-range missiles known as Zelzal-1 and Zelzal-2. There have been claims that these could strike as far as Israel's nuclear plant in the Negev desert.
No one really knows how many Hizbullah fighters there are, said Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, who has written a book on the organisation. "Because it's a populist grassroots movement, every household [ in the Hizbullah areas] has family members who could be easily mobilised.
"I think the Israelis are fully aware that demolishing Hizbullah is virtually impossible."
Iran denied yesterday that it was supplying Hizbullah with weapons to use against Israel and dismissed accusations that its troops had helped the group launch recent attacks.
But a foreign ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, appeared to warn that Iran would act if Israel expanded its operations to include Syria, Tehran's close ally.