OPINION:
Israel, expecting retaliation from Hezbollah over the assassination of Samir Kuntar, a Druze fighter who was coordinating Hezbollah militant activities in Syria, took extraordinary action to protect its border. In order to prevent infiltration during a recent strong storm along the Lebanese border with Israel, the IDF shelled Israeli territory along the demarcation line in the Shebaa Farms area for the past five days.
“At around 10:00 p.m., Israeli artillery shelled the area around its positions on the border [between] the occupied Shebaa Farms [and] the adjacent liberated areas,” Lebanon’s state National News Agency reported late Sunday night.
The online outlet, El-Nashra, reported that they had “heard, at a late hour last night, the reverberation of explosions accompanied by bursts of heavy machine gun fire [emanating] from the Israeli army’s positions inside Shebaa Farms … the direction of the demarcation lines with the villages of Al-Arqoub in the hills [around] Shebaa Farms. It transpired that they were sweep operations the Israeli army had been carrying out for over a week from time to time all along the Farms front.”
Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, stressed that his party would strike back against Israel for the killing of Kuntar, according to the Blogs of War.
“The response is coming,” Mr. Nasrallah said, in the latest barb in a growing war of words between Hezbollah and Israeli military and political figures who have threatened a “harsh response” against the Lebanese party, should it attempt a reprisal attack.
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