'Katyushas were one-off attack'

Brigadier General (Res.) Shalom Harari, a senior researcher at the International Institute for Counter Terrorism (ICT), worked for the Ministry of Defense for 20 years in the West Bank and Gaza as an advisor on Palestinian affairs.

"I don't claim to know things with certainty a day after the attack," he cautioned, adding, "But in my personal estimation, this was probably carried out by a Palestinian group based in southern Lebanon which has an interest to embarrass the Lebanese government and the UNIFIL force, and possibly to 'join the celebrations in Gaza,' so to speak."

Harari recalled that an al-Qaeda linked group carried out a similar attack in December 2005 and in that incident, no follow-up attacks took place.

"The attack (in 2005) was carried out by a small Palestinian group, and it was very similar to this, with primitive rocket launching capablities. On Saturday evening, the Northern Command Front was right to lower its state readiness within 3 hours after receiving intelligence that said the attack yesterday resembled the attack in 2005," he added.

Naming Fatah al-Islam and Jund al-Sham as "two organizations that are connected to the global jihad, and fighting the Lebanese government," Harari said the groups were attracting "all kinds of volunteers from Yemen, and Saudi Arabia into Lebanon.

In light of the deteriorating war between these groups and the Lebanese military, in which over 100 have been killed in the Naher el-Bared Camp, the groups openly threatened to carry out acts that will pressure Lebanon. They bombed a Christian neighborhood, and a Druze market. The rocket attacks yesterday on Kiryat Shmona are connected to this, in my view," he said.

Harari added that he did not identify Syria's fingerprints in the attack. "The Syrians don't have an interest to suddenly heat up the border. They know Olmert is visiting the US right now, and they don't want to aggravate US President George Bush.

To carry out such an attack is exactly what they don't need right now," he said. "This is not something that will be repeated. It's like mosquitos, they are an annoyance, but in a few days the attack will be forgotten," Harari added.

'Assad fired rockets at Israel'

But Farid Ghadri, a Syrian exile, and head of a Syrian opposition party which calls for the end of the Assad regime, told Ynetnews that Syrian President Basher Assad was responsible for the rocket attacks.

Ghadri, head of the Reform Party of Syria, is based in Washington DC, and has just completed a week-long visit to Israel, where he addressed the Knesset, and toured the Golan Heights.

Ghardi stated that Assad "started a war against Israel in the summer of 2006 and he started a war against Lebanon via Fatah al-Islam, a Syrian homegrown international terror organization, and now he is starting to send rockets from southern Lebanon into Israel to show the world that with or without UN Resolutions, he controls terror emanating from Lebanon and emanating from Gaza."

"The Syrian regime is on a path of terror that will not stop unless the international community and Israel realize that its downfall is less costly than its violence. Assad keeps upping the ante because he knows that there is no will to bring him down," Ghardi warned.

"Furthermore, he is telling the world, by instigating Hamas terror, that you need to look at what happens when Islamists come to power," he added.

"If Israel wants real peace, it must lift the immunity it has granted the Assad regime by allowing Syrians to build a nation of peace rather than a nation of resistance," Ghardi said.

Previously unknown group claims rocket attack

Meanwhile Monday, a previously unknown militant Islamic group claimed responsibility for the rocket

attack on northern Israel.

The self-proclaimed group, "The Jihadi Badr Brigades - Lebanon branch," Vowed in a statement faxed to The Associated Press in Beirut to continue attacks on Israel.

"We had promised our people Jihad (holy war). Here, we again strike the Zionists when a group from the Jihadi Badr Brigades struck the Zionists in the occupied Palestinian territory," the statement said.

The authenticity of the group's claim could not be immediately confirmed.

AP contributed to the report