Israel-Hezbollah conflict

During [a] six-year campaign of lukewarm conflict, both Hezbollah and Israel played according to the vague (but much-touted) "rules of the game," which were purportedly in place to prevent the type of events on view this week.

According to those rules, Hezbollah set up what it called "fishing traps" for IDF soldiers. If IDF soldiers could be baited into entering a border village on the wrong side of the "Blue Line," they were fair game. In return for such combat discretion, Israel only ever responded by hitting Hezbollah outposts and the occasional electric plant with rocket fire — staying well away from population centers.

But entering into Israel to capture soldiers — as happened on Wednesday — was a new twist altogether (though one Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah had long threatened).

— MSNBC, 14/7/06


A Lebanese TV station also showed video of what it said an F-16 fighter jet crashing in the Jamjour district near the Hezbollah stronghold of southern Beirut. Israel said none of its aircraft had been hit or had crashed. Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV said the aircraft was a helicopter gunship.

A Lebanese security official said the object was a fuel tank dropped by an Israeli aircraft over Kfar Chima, a town near southern Beirut. After it dropped the fuel tank, the aircraft fired two missiles at three cargo trucks in the area.

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An Israeli airstrike in Lebanon destroyed at least one long-range Iranian missile capable of hitting Tel Aviv. Israeli military officials said aircraft targeted a truck carrying the weapons before they could be launched.

— Associated Press, 17/7/06


Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry said that his country would welcome a more energetic and decisive international effort to bring about immediate and full implementation of Security Council resolutions 1559 and 1680, which call for the disarmament of Hezbollah.

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The Bush administration … insisted the call for halting Israeli airstrikes was conditioned on Hezbollah releasing captured Israeli soldiers and ending missile attacks on Israel….

The U.S. view was supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She said the soldiers must be returned unharmed and attacks on Israel must stop. “Then, of course, also the Israeli military action must be ended,” she said.

— MSNBC, 17/7/06


Hundreds of French citizens and other Europeans were evacuating on a commercial ship sent by France, which has more than 20,000 citizens in Lebanon. The evacuees began moving in buses from a Beirut school used as a gathering point to Beirut’s port, where they were to board boats taking them to the ship anchored offshore.

“Who knows when this will end,” said Habib al-Saad, who was sending his three sons. “If any of our Arab leaders had a brain this would have been resolved a long time ago. But they don’t,” al-Saad said.

— Associated Press, 17/7/06