From Haaretz

Israeli officer killed in clash on Israel-Lebanon border

3 Lebanese soldiers, one journalist killed as Israeli and Lebanese soldiers exchange fire at border; second Israeli officer seriously wounded.

Published 18:04 03.08.10


One Israeli officer was killed during clashes between Israel and the Lebanese army along the border on Tuesday. 45-year-old Lt. Col. Dov Harari, from Netanya, was a reserves battalion commander in the engineering corps.

Another Israeli officer sustained severe wounds and has been admitted to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. He is in stable condition.

Lebanese and Israeli troops exchanged fire on the border Tuesday in the most serious clashes since a fierce war four years ago, and Lebanon said at least three of its soldiers and a journalist were killed in shelling.

The violence apparently erupted over a move by Israeli soldiers to trim some hedges along the border, a sign of the level of tensions at the frontier where Israel fought a war in 2006 with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Harari, father of four, was killed by sniper fire directed at his post. The other officer at the post was captain Ezra Lakia, who was seriously wounded. The two were situated some 300 meters from the border within Israel in a position to oversee the trimming of the bushes along the border fence.

Israel Defense Forces GOC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot announced Tuesday that the two Israeli officers had been very seriously hit during the exchange of fire. Eizenkot said that the incident had been a "deliberate ambush."

Eizenkot told Israeli media that "a routine operation was carried out during the afternoon near Misgav Am – an operation whose purpose was to trim some bushes near the border, in our [Israeli] territory. It was on both sides of the border but still within [Israeli] territory. Officers oversaw the operation from a permanent position. Sniper fire was directed at the officers, and two of them were wounded as a result."

The GOC Northern Command stressed that "this was a pre-planned event, aggression by the Lebanese army who shot at soldiers inside Israeli territory without any provocation. We view this as a very severe incident."

From the Independent

UN: Israel was on its own side before border clash

By Robert Fisk
Thursday, 5 August 2010


So was the tree inside Israel? The UN implies that the shrubbery that ultimately cost the lives of five men on Tuesday was on the Israeli side of the "Blue Line".

"Unifil established... that the trees being cut by the Israeli army are located south of the Blue Line on the Israeli side," said a Unifil military spokesman.

The tree was certainly north of Israel's own "technical fence". But the Lebanese have their doubts about some parts of the "Blue Line" – which is why Israel's attempt to cut down what appears to be a spruce tree started a gun battle on Tuesday on Lebanon's southern border which killed three Lebanese soldiers, a 55-year-old Lebanese journalist and an Israeli lieutenant-colonel. Along with the fact that Israel had apparently not co-ordinated its gardening expedition with the Lebanese via the UN.

They were at it again yesterday, tearing down more undergrowth on the Lebanese side of the fence – though south of the "Blue Line" – without any coordination with the Lebanese. The UN commander in southern Lebanon was holding tripartite talks with both sides last night in an effort to put an end to this tragic nonsense. The clearance of the shrubbery is intended to enlarge the horizon for Israeli border security cameras – though it hardly seems worth the lives of five men.

The real problem is twofold. The "Blue Line" was inadvisedly drawn on the orders of an ambitious UN civil servant who would one day like to be UN Secretary General. In his haste to draw an "accurate" border, for example, he put the entire area of Shebaa farms – which was Lebanese during the post-First World War French mandate – south and east of the line, effectively putting it under Israeli occupation (which had in military terms been the case since the 1967 Middle East war).

But political errors of this kind led to other mistakes and sapped the belief of Lebanese authorities in the UN's maps.

Add to this the entire regional hostility – Hamas versus Israel, Israel's threats against Syria and Iran and Syria's and Iran's threats against Israel, not to mention the wreckage of George Bush's adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq – and you can see how a tree can start a war.

At least three of the victims of Tuesday's battle – which the Shia Muslim Hizbollah eagerly reported as a Lebanese victory without actually participating in it – were buried yesterday.

At least one of the soldiers was a Christian and so was Assaf Abu Rahal, the journalist and father of three children, Nisrine, Geryes and Mazen.

The UN announced it was still investigating what went wrong. Many UN troops mount foot and vehicle patrols along the frontier road where the shooting took place. They often spend their time trying to prevent journalists taking photographs of the great vista of Israeli countryside in northern Galilee. They can stop cameras shooting pictures, it seems. But not guns shooting bullets.

Originally Posted by Francois Cellier

They can stop cameras shooting pictures, it seems. But not guns shooting bullets.

That's meant to be scalding? I mean...

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