The armed peace on the Lebanese-Israeli border, established at the end of the 2006 war between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, has successfully passed a new test. But there is no guarantee that this fragile ceasefire will not be shattered in the next test. Open conflict has been avoided, but the war of nerves continues. This is the half-hearted conclusion that can be drawn from the dangerous incident which took place Monday, July 27, in the Shebaa farm sector.
The alert was given in the afternoon, when Israeli shells crashed on the steep western slopes of Mount Hermon, on the edge of the Golan Heights. Occupied by the Hebrew state since 1967, claimed by Lebanon, but returning to Syria according to UN maps, the area is a place of recurring confrontation between the pro-Iranian Shiite movement and the Tsahal.
The reason for these shots is not known with certainty. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the UN peacekeeping mission in the south of the country, has opened an investigation, the results of which will not be known for several days. The Israeli general staff claims to have foiled a Hezbollah attack. According to him, a commando of three to five men penetrated a few tens of meters beyond the “blue line” separating Lebanon from Israel, before being spotted by the Israeli army and turning back under its fire. .
“Israeli nervousness”
The version of the Lebanese militia, which is also a pivotal party in the ruling coalition in Beirut, is completely different. It denies any incursion into the occupied territory and attributes the Israeli bombardments to the nervousness of its enemies, on high alert since the death of a member of Hezbollah on July 20 in an Israeli air raid in Syria.
In September 2019, shortly after two of its fighters were killed in similar conditions, the Shiite movement fired anti-tank rockets at an Israeli military vehicle, traveling near the Lebanese border, without causing any casualties. A few days earlier, Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, had promised to respond to any Israeli attack that would result in the deaths of fighters from the Shiite movement in Syria. The Party of God has been there militarily since 2012, as part of Iran’s efforts to save the Assad regime.
If this context encourages observers to favor the thesis of abortive infiltration, caution remains in order. “Hezbollah tried something, that’s what seems most likely to me, notes a security expert, on condition of anonymity. But it is also true that there is an Israeli nervousness ”, he adds, recalling that in mid-May, a Syrian shepherd who grazed his flock in the Shebaa region was wounded by IDF fire. The Israeli press was also surprised that the army did not broadcast any images to support its claims, while the area is riddled with cameras.
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