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Hezbollah Attack Kills Israeli Soldiers Near Lebanon, Raising Fears of Escalation
Hezbollah Kills Israeli Soldiers Near Lebanon
(about 5 hours later)
JERUSALEM — Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven were wounded in a missile attack Wednesday as they drove in a disputed zone along the Lebanese border, Israel said, in the most serious flare-up in the area in years. Hezbollah claimed responsibility.
JERUSALEM — Hezbollah antitank missiles killed two Israeli soldiers as they drove in a disputed area along the Lebanese border on Wednesday, a sharp retaliation for Israel’s deadly drone strike last week that killed six Hezbollah fighters and an Iranian general.
The attack raised the risk of a further escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that is one of Israel’s most tenacious enemies. Both sides lobbed rockets and artillery at each other for hours afterward, though a tense quiet prevailed by midafternoon.
The attack was the most severe eruption of hostilities in the area since the fierce enemies’ devastating monthlong war in 2006 and threatened to incite a significant escalation. But after a second Hezbollah strike of mortar shells on Mount Hermon and Israeli artillery, tank and air fire on targets in southern Lebanon, a tense quiet set in before dusk.
Hezbollah, which had vowed to avenge a deadly Israeli strike on its fighters in southern Syria this month, said in a statement that its Quneitra Martyrs Brigade had carried out the missile strike at 11:35 a.m.
While both sides had domestic reasons for needing to show a strong hand, neither is eager for another all-out battle, analysts said, adding that the exchange on Wednesday appeared oddly orchestrated to signal a reluctance to escalate the conflict. They cautioned, however, that fighting along the increasingly volatile frontier, against a backdrop of Middle East chaos, could easily spiral out of control.
The flare-up shattered a fragile calm that has mostly held along the frontier since the monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006
“It’s a very delicate game, because both sides want to respond hard enough that they’re not perceived as weak, but not too hard to start a war,” said Benedetta Berti of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “It’s a very, very thin line. There’s plenty of room for miscalculations. If this is where it ends, we’re moving on to the next chapter, with the awareness that every single time this starts again, we get closer to a proper war.”
A Spanish soldier serving with the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon was also killed during the clashes.
With its popularity plunging among the Sunni majority in the Arab world, Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite movement backed by Iran, has been under intense pressure to return its focus to its main mission of fighting Israel after two years devoted to helping the Syrian government combat a mostly Sunni insurgency. In Lebanon, several experts said Hezbollah’s strikes on Wednesday seemed intended to maximize publicity to please loyalists — and its Iranian patrons — and exact revenge without provoking a crushing response.
The peacekeeper was killed in an explosion at a United Nations base near the village of Ghajar, said Andrea Tenenti, a spokesman for the force, who said all the parties knew the locations of the bases. The United Nations has not determined whether the fire was Israeli, and an investigation was underway, Mr. Tenenti said.
“To me, the whole thing was calibrated to say, ‘You did your thing, we did our thing,’ ” said one Western diplomat involved in talks to tamp down the possibilities of conflagration. Speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the talks publicly, he said diplomats had heard directly from a Hezbollah official that “they intended a limited operation and they do not want war or escalation.”
At the United Nations headquarters in New York, a spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said the peacekeeper had been killed in a crossfire, when six rockets were fired at Israeli positions and Israel forces responded. Mr. Dujarric declined to say who was responsible.
A Spanish member of the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon was also killed during the clashes Wednesday.
But later, the Spanish ambassador to the United Nations, Roman Oyarzun Marchesi, told reporters that the peacekeeper had been killed by the Israeli artillery fire that followed rocket attacks from Lebanese territory. “It was because of the escalation of violence and it came from the Israeli side,” he said after a closed-door meeting of the Security Council. The Council was expected to issue a statement later.
After a closed-door meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the Spanish ambassador, Roman Oyarzun Marchesi, said that the peacekeeper had been killed by the Israeli artillery fire that followed rocket attacks from Lebanese territory. “It was because of the escalation of violence, and it came from the Israeli side,” he said.
About 10,000 United Nations troops are stationed along the Israel-Lebanon frontier.
The Israeli soldiers were killed at Shebaa Farms — known in Israel as Mont Dov — a strip claimed by Israel, Lebanon and sometimes Syria near the intersection of all three and adjacent to the Golan Heights. Three parts of the Israeli-controlled Golan remained closed to civilians Wednesday evening. In Lebanon, Hezbollah backers celebrated with sweets and fireworks but also filled their gas tanks, to be prepared in case war breaks out.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said the military had conveyed its condolences over the death of the Spanish soldier and was investigating the circumstances.
As he convened a special security assessment at military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said the governments of Syria and Lebanon shared responsibility for the consequences of aggression from their territory, and promised that “those who are behind the attack today will pay the full price.”
Colonel Lerner said the Israeli soldiers had been traveling in unarmored, unmarked, white vehicles — an Isuzu D-Max truck and a Citroen Berlingo van — on a road civilians also use, about a mile from the border, when they were hit by five antitank missiles fired from less than three miles away. The first vehicle was hit, killing the two soldiers, and the wounded soldiers exited their vehicle to take cover.
“For a while, Iran has been trying, through the Hezbollah, to form an additional terror front against us from the Golan Heights,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement. “We are acting with resolve and responsibility against this effort.”
There were “civilian vehicles also in the vicinity,” Colonel Lerner said. Three areas of the Golan Heights were closed to civilian traffic into the evening.
Hezbollah issued a bare-bones statement taking responsibility for the attack, leaving it to its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to respond more fully in a speech scheduled for Friday. But loyalists circulated a cartoon depicting Lebanon as Israel’s coffin, and Al Manar, its satellite television channel, played martial music and videos between news reports all day.
About an hour after the attack on the soldiers’ convoy, several mortar shells were fired at Israeli military positions in the border area and on Mount Hermon in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. No injuries were reported.
For one Hezbollah loyalist in southern Lebanon whose family lost a house in the 2006 war — a woman who asked to be identified only by her first and middle name, Aya Hussein, to avoid repercussions when abroad — the events Wednesday ushered in a new era in which “we are the scary ones, not the scared.”
The Israeli military said that it had responded to the attacks with combined aerial and ground strikes on what it called “Hezbollah operational positions” in Lebanon, and that it might take further action. Israeli government and military leaders were meeting for consultations.
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner of the Israeli military said the soldiers who were killed were in unarmored, unmarked, white vehicles — an Isuzu D-Max truck and a Citroen Berlingo van — on a road about a mile from the border. The first vehicle was hit by five antitank missiles fired from less than three miles away around 11:30 a.m., he said, killing Capt. Yochai Kalangel, 25, and Sgt. Dor Chaim Nimi, 20. Seven other soldiers were injured.
Tensions have been building for days in the triangle of territory between Israel, Lebanon and Syria as Israel has braced for retaliation for the Jan. 18 airstrike that killed an Iranian general and five fighters from Hezbollah, including Jihad Mughniyeh, whose father, Imad Mughniyeh, was the group’s military commander until his assassination in 2008.
Israel captured the small strip of former farmland at the intersection of its borders with Syria and Lebanon, along with the adjacent Golan, in the 1967 war, and later annexed both, a move not recognized by the United Nations. Lebanon views Shebaa Farms as occupied Lebanese territory, while Syria, because of a century-old dispute over the never-demarcated border, has sometimes claimed Shebaa as its own.
On Tuesday, at least two rockets fired from Syria struck the Israeli-controlled portion of the Golan Heights, without causing injury. Israel responded with artillery toward the suspected launching sites, and overnight it carried out airstrikes in territory under the control of the Syrian Army.
That the strike Wednesday was in an already contested area, that it targeted soldiers and not civilians, and that it did not include an infiltration or kidnapping attempt were all seen as signs of relative restraint on the part of Hezbollah.
Hezbollah, Iran’s ally in Lebanon, is now fighting in the Syrian civil war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad’s government, further complicating matters and increasing the risk of Israeli entanglement.
“This is Hezbollah saying, ‘We will respond, we’re not pushovers, we can defend ourselves, but this is not a cross-border raid and bring the bodies back — you didn’t see rockets, you saw small mortars,’ ” noted Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The response had to be somewhat measured because the last thing in the world they want is to open up a full second front. They’re not capable of fighting two full-fledged wars on two separate fronts at the same time.”
“Whoever is behind today’s attack will pay the full price,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said. He also said the Lebanese and Syrian governments “share responsibility for the consequences of the attacks emanating from their territories against the State of Israel.”
Israel had been bracing for a response since the Jan. 18 airstrike on a convoy in the Syrian part of the Golan that killed the Iranian general and the six Hezbollah fighters, including Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of its slain military commander. Kamel Wazne, a Lebanese political analyst, said that attack constituted “a major breach” of Israel’s 1974 cease-fire with Syria and of a tacit agreement not to engage Hezbollah inside Syria. He said that Hezbollah felt its nemesis was changing the “rules of the game.”
Israel’s hard-line foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, told his Chinese counterpart during a visit to Beijing that Israel should “change its approach” and respond to the missile attack “in a very harsh and disproportionate manner,” according to a statement on Mr. Lieberman’s Facebook page.
“Israel crossed a red line, and if Hezbollah did not react, Israel will not stop,” said Mr. Wazne, who has extensive contacts in the group. The attack Wednesday, he added, “shows that Hezbollah’s confrontation is with Israel, so it can get back its respected position in the Arab world” by returning focus to where, in the eyes of much of the region, “it was supposed to be the whole time.”
Israel has accused Hezbollah of trying to build a new front against it, with Iran’s help, in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights. Israeli analysts said that with its actions, Israel was sending a clear message to Iran and Hezbollah that it would not tolerate such a change in the status quo.
For Israel, the exchange comes at a precarious time: seven weeks before an election, and amid American-led negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Israeli military officials have long been preparing for what they see as an inevitable next round with Hezbollah, and imagine it as an intense, costly battle for both sides.
“Until now our relations with Assad were based on a deal of quiet in the Golan Heights in exchange for Israel refraining from intervening in the civil war,” said Professor Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. “Now this has changed. We have seen that Assad is no longer willing or able to prevent Hezbollah activities in the Golan. So all the options are open.”
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s hard-line foreign minister, who has been faltering in the polls, called for “a very harsh and disproportionate” response.
Professor Inbar listed three possibilities: a quick end to the hostilities, a war of attrition along Israel’s northern frontier or an escalation.
Isaac Herzog of the Labor Party, Mr. Netanyahu’s prime challenger, who was touring the area at the time of the attack, said that “if anyone in Hezbollah believes that during elections we can be threatened and divided, he is gravely mistaken.”
Israel has long been preparing for what it views as an inevitable next round against Hezbollah, and Professor Inbar said Israel could exploit the current situation as an opportunity to strike at Hezbollah’s arsenal of missiles. But he saidMr. Netanyahu was “usually cautious in matters of war.”
Security is Mr. Netanyahu’s strong suit, so the threat of a conflagration could benefit him at the ballot box, but he has also proved risk-averse in military operations. The 2006 war, with about 1,000 Lebanese and 160 Israeli fatalities, was widely viewed as a disaster.
Entering into a full-scale confrontation ahead of Israeli elections scheduled for March 17 would also be “a gamble,” Professor Inbar said. Mr. Netanyahu, who is viewed by many Israelis as having strong security credentials, is competing for a fourth term in office.
“Military adventures prior to elections, of course, are a double-edged sword,” said Jonathan Spyer, an international affairs specialist at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “The Israeli public doesn’t object to military operations if they’re quick and clean, but the last thing you want to do is go into elections in the middle of a bloody war like the summer of 2006.”
Israeli military analysts had predicted that Hezbollah would attempt revenge by targeting Israeli soldiers, but that it would avoid directing attacks at Israeli civilians to reduce the likelihood of a full-scale war. Still, several retired Israeli military generals said that the exchange Wednesday was more serious than previous ones, and that it might be difficult to avoid further escalation.
But like other experts on both sides, Mr. Spyer warned that strategic planning and balancing interests could easily give way in such a heated environment.
Israel Ziv, a reserve major general who once led the army’s operations directorate, said in a call with international journalists, “It’s very clear that, very easily from events and retaliation, we will find ourselves in a war that does not belong to Israel.”
“Deterrence is not an exact science; it’s not even a science at all — it’s an art,” he said. “We’re in the midst of an escalation, and we don’t know where it’s going to end.”
The missile attack on Wednesday took place in Shebaa Farms, an area known as Mount Dov in Israel. Lebanon considers it occupied by Israel, and Syria also claims it. Israel captured the area, along with the adjacent Golan Heights, in the 1967 war and later annexed both regions in a move not recognized by the United Nations.
The attack had echoes of the cross-border raid by Hezbollah in 2006 that precipitated the war that summer, which left more than 1,000 Lebanese and roughly 160 Israelis dead. At the time, Hezbollah fired an antitank missile at an Israeli border patrol. Three soldiers were killed and two others who had been badly wounded were seized and taken into Lebanon, where they died. Five more Israeli soldiers were killed as they gave chase.
The remains of the captured soldiers were returned to Israel in a prisoner exchange in 2008.
Shortly before the assault on Wednesday, a Hezbollah fighter in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon said by telephone that residents were storing food, fearing an Israeli attack.
Hezbollah, the Shiite paramilitary group that is Lebanon’s most powerful fighting force and political party, had several motivations in responding to the Jan. 18 airstrike that killed its fighters: It is eager to prove that the Syria battle has not hurt its ability to check Israel on the southern border; and its loyalists have demanded revenge for the death of Jihad Mughniyeh.
Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, said that the airstrike was an Israeli attempt to impose “a new equation” on the conflict in Syria, one that could not go unanswered. He also called it proof of what Hezbollah has long contended, that Israel is supporting insurgents in Syria to weaken that country, a longtime Israeli enemy.
The group could also have been under pressure from Iran, which provides the bulk of its weapons, to avenge the death of its general.
Analysts had predicted that Hezbollah would try to keep its response proportional, to avoid a repeat of the 2006 war with Israel that devastated much of south Beirut and southern Lebanon. Neither Israel nor Hezbollah wants a new war, analysts say, as each faces security threats elsewhere.
In Israel, the main television stations on Wednesday broadcast the events in the north live all day, much as they did during last summer’s 50-day war against Hamas in Gaza.
Across southern Lebanon and south Beirut, Hezbollah loyalists celebrated with sweets after Wednesday’s attack and said they were not afraid of retaliation. Some smoked tobacco water pipes near the border, saying they wanted to watch the shelling, and others went about their lives as usual.
In the southern Lebanese town of Srifa, a resident who described herself as a Hezbollah loyalist and a mother whose family lost a house in the 2006 war spent the day enjoying a lavish lunch with relatives. She identified herself only by her first and middle name, Aya Hussein, to avoid repercussions when traveling abroad.
Asked to describe her feelings, she said: “Overwhelmed. Happy. Proud. And truthfully, a bit scared.”
But, she added, it appeared as the day progressed that the attacks would not lead to all-out war because of what she called Israel’s wariness in challenging Hezbollah’s arsenal, which includes long-range missiles.
She called it a new era, in which “we are the scary ones, not the scared.”
People were celebrating with baklava and fireworks, she said, but also hedging their bets, filling their gas tanks, just “in case.”
