MIDEAST: The Heat Spreads to Lebanon

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Aug 15 2003 (IPS) - The death of an Israeli teenager from Hezbollah artillery fire earlier this week has suddenly raised tensions on the border with Lebanon after months of relative calm. The death was the first since Israel withdrew its troops from south Lebanon in May 2000.

The death of an Israeli teenager from Hezbollah artillery fire earlier this week has suddenly raised tensions on the border with Lebanon after months of relative calm. The death was the first since Israel withdrew its troops from south Lebanon in May 2000.

Israel beefed up its artillery on the border following the attack, but both Israel and the Hezbollah appear anxious, for very different reasons, to ensure the skirmish does not escalate out of control.

The latest exchanges began Friday last week when Hezbollah, a Shia organisation with Syrian and Iranian backing shelled Israeli army positions on the disputed Shebaa Farms area, known in Israel as Mount Dov. This was the first shelling there since January this year. Israel responded by hammering Hezbollah positions with artillery shells, and rockets from fighter aircraft.

The militant group’s guerrilla war against Israel’s 18-year occupation of a border zone in south Lebanon was a major factor in the ultimate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the area. Hezbollah said the shelling now was in response to an Israeli attack August 2 in which a Hezbollah member was blown up in his car. Israel did not respond to the allegations.

Tension mounted Sunday when anti-aircraft shells fired by Hezbollah landed in the northern Israeli working class town Shlomi. One of them killed 16-year-old Haviv Dadon as he walked home from doing a summer job. Israel retaliated by destroying the Hezbollah position from where the shells were fired.

Israeli leaders warned of harsh retaliation if the Shia group, which is on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist groups, was not restrained. Israel warned Damascus via the U.S. that it would strike at Syrian targets in Lebanon if Hezbollah continued firing. Syria is the main powerbroker in Lebanon, where it has tens of thousands of troops.

When former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak pulled the army out of Lebanon more than three years ago, Israel withdrew to the lines demarcated by the United Nations (UN). Barak was anxious for the border to be recognised by the international community, believing this would stop Hezbollah attacks.

But Hezbollah argued that the Shebaa Farms – a series of farms on the slopes of Mount Hermon, which was captured by Israel from Syria in the 1967 war, was Lebanese territory. It began attacking Israeli positions there after the withdrawal.

The UN has ruled that the area is Syrian territory conquered by Israel in the 1967 War, and is therefore a matter that must be settled in talks between Jerusalem and Damascus.

The UN criticised Hezbollah attacks this week. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on "all governments that have influence on Hezbollah" to restrain it.. But the UN also spoke out against reconnaissance flights by Israeli planes over Lebanon. These flights, which are meant to gather information on Hezbollah positions as well as on Syria, draw anti-aircraft fire from Hezbollah gunners, with shells often raining down on towns in northern Israel.

Hezbollah insists the flights violate Lebanese sovereignty. Israeli military officials say Hezbollah uses the overflights as a pretext to fire shells into Israel û an act they call "flat fire". It was one of these shells that killed Haviv Dadon.

"They don’t even aim the anti-aircraft fire at the planes in the sky," Moshe Marzuk, a former high-ranking officer in the Israeli military and now a senior researcher at the International Centre for Anti-Terror Policy near Tel Aviv told IPS. "They aim low, at Israeli towns across the border." After Israel withdrew from the south of Lebanon, the vacuum was filled by Hezbollah, not the Lebanese army. Hezbollah has deployed thousands of long- range rockets close to the border, all aimed at Israel. "Israel has to know what is going on there, and so has to conduct reconnaissance flights," says Marzuk. "The purpose of the (Hezbollah) rockets is not to decorate south Lebanon."

On Wednesday, Israeli planes again buzzed Lebanese skies, breaking the sound barrier near Beirut. This time, Hezbollah fire did not stray across the border. But Israelis are wondering whether the fracas of the recent days is a brief escalation, or a sign of resumption of hostilities with Hezbollah.

The Shia group appears to be playing a game of controlled escalation. In the light of U.S. pressure on Syria and Iran following the Iraq war, Hezbollah leaders understand that a major conflagration along the border with Israel is not what its sponsors want. "Hezbollah has got the message that with the U.S. pressing on the terror front, now is not the time for it to embarrass Iran and Syria," says Marzuk.

Hezbollah attacks are a sign of growing pressure on Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Marzuk says, to reach a prisoner-swap deal with Israel. A group of Lebanese men including a Hezbollah leader Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid are being held in Israeli jails to be used as a bargaining chip for the release of Israelis held in Lebanon.

"Nasrallah declared that he would not only bring about the release of Lebanese captives, but also Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails," says Marzuk. "But what happened was that Palestinian prisoners were released and Lebanese captives are still in jail."

Israel is anxious to maintain calm on its northern border. Its reaction has been muted. Hostilities on the border, Sharon knows, will extinguish domestic summer tourism in the north of the country, which after many lean years has begun to flourish after the mid-2000 withdrawal. Also, the Israeli leader is reluctant to open another front as he tries to contend with the Palestinian uprising.