Israel Update for August 2010

David Dolan

Israel was almost plunged into a major war in early August when Lebanese Army troops opened fire on Israeli soldiers along their shared Northern Galilee border, not far from the tense Golan Heights. One long-serving IDF reserve officer was instantly killed and another soldier severely wounded during the unprovoked attack. Subsequent press reports said Defense Minister Ehud Barak was on the verge of responding by launching a large military operation against Lebanon, which the Lebanese Army, Syria and Hizbullah would have undoubtedly fully and violently resisted. He was said to have been talked out of doing so by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is close to both Israeli and Lebanese leaders.

The intense border clash, which also left a number of Lebanese soldiers and a journalist dead, took place soon after a series of rockets were launched at two major Israeli cities, smaller communities, and at the Jordanian port city of Akaba. The Palestinian Hamas group was thought to be behind the string of hostile assaults.

The rocket firings came as announcements were made of plans for additional foreign aid flotilla sailings to the Gaza Strip, designed to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Hamas-ruled coastal zone. One such ship was reported to have left an Algerian port on August 19 carrying Muslim clerics and aid cargo on board. Two ships ferrying some 70 women were planning an August 22 departure from Lebanon, but the flotilla was postponed after officials in Beirut and Cyprus opposed it. London is among several other port cities where additional vessels are due to depart from in September. Meanwhile a special Israeli commission took testimony from senior government and military leaders concerning the late May clash at sea aboard a Turkish ship headed for the Gaza Strip.

Tension remains high with Hizbullah's paymaster Iran, whose Russian-built nuclear reactor began to be fueled up on August 21. Several prominent pundits and diplomats, including one of America's former UN ambassadors, urged Israel to consider bombing the facility before it was fully activated. This came two weeks after Iran enhanced its public alliance with Syria during a visit by its Foreign Minister to Damascus. Days later, Iranian state television showed pictures of thousands of dug graves that it claimed would become the final resting place of anyone who dared to attack the militant Shiite country.

Amid all the war talk, American officials announced that direct peace negotiations would soon be launched with between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. PA President Mahmoud Abbas was said to have been pressured into accepting such talks by US and EU leaders, backed by Russia and the UN. Hamas leaders again condemned Abbas for his reported willingness to sit down face to face with the hated "Zionist regime."

Like people in Russia and other parts of the world, Israelis were largely preoccupied during August with staying cool as record temperatures sizzled the country. The public was asked to curb electricity use during peak hours as the national grid came close to overrunning its operating capacity several times.

On The Brink

Israeli military forces remain on a heightened state of alert following the deadly border confrontation between IDF and Lebanese Army forces on August 3. The clash was the worst incident along the tense border since the Second Lebanon War ended in August 2006. It started when employees of a private Israeli landscaping firm began pruning overgrown brush and trees on the Israeli side of the international "Blue Line" border, under the protection of IDF soldiers. The border had been officially demarcated by the United Nations following the IDF pullout from southern Lebanon in May 2000. The thinning operation was fairly routine, with Israel frequently cutting back natural vegetation in order to keep a keener surveillance eye on the Lebanese side of the border from where hostile Hizbullah militia forces have often launched attacks in the past.

UN peacekeeping officers later announced that their IDF liaison counterparts had notified them in advance of the small-scale pruning operation, so that they in turn could inform the Lebanese Army about it, which they had done. They also confirmed the IDF's contention that the landscapers and protecting soldiers had not crossed the international border, as Lebanese government leaders had angrily charged, and that Lebanese soldiers had opened fire first.

After it became clear that a senior reserve army officer (a father of four in his early 40s) stationed in a nearby IDF outpost had been deliberately targeted and killed by the unprovoked sniper fire, with another nearby soldier severely wounded (an award winning immigrant from Ethiopia), the IDF responded by heavily shelling Lebanese Army positions in the area, killing two soldiers in the nearby village of Adaisseh. A journalist working for a Beirut newspaper was also slain by artillery shellfire. IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi was quickly flown to the scene to oversea any potential additional operations.

The UN subsequently noted that the Israel-Lebanon border fence in the Upper Galilee area-erected by Israel following the Blue Line demarcation-does not follow the actual border line in some places, but runs inside Israeli territory for easier patrolling purposes (the UN later called for that fact to be altered). Of course, Lebanese soldiers already knew this. So while it may have appeared to local Lebanese commanders that the Israelis were violating the border (even that "violation" amounted to just a few pruning cuts administered by civilian workers from over the top of the fence), that was not actually the case. Still they opened fire, knowing this could have sparked a fresh Middle East war with untold dire consequences.

Although the over 12,000 man UNIFIL force-comprised largely of French and Italian troops but also including Indonesians and others-later confirmed the IDF's accounts of the confrontation, their actions at the time were seen by many in Israel as less than neutral. Video clips clearly show UN troops frantically shouting at the Israelis to "Stop!!" their work immediately and "Go back!!" as if they were actually violating the border. This only seemed to spur nearby Lebanese Army forces to open fire, knowing they were being filmed by Lebanese media crews, including some from Hizbullah's Manar television station who "just happened" to be on the scene.

Israeli officials later said that they did not think the order to shoot came from senior army officers, but from local commanders who were probably Shiites themselves, and sympathetic to the radical Iranian-run militia group. At any rate, someone had obviously notified the Lebanese media to come to the scene, and it wasn't the IDF. This fact only increased speculation that Shiite commanders had previously decided to make a show of force that day, and wanted the media to witness it. This may well have been planned in coordination with Lebanese Hizbullah political and militia leaders, controlled by Iran.

Premeditated Attack?