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Last update - 00:00 11/08/2003
Analysis / Marching - again - to its own drummer
By Amos Harel
 

Hezbollah's anti-aircraft shelling of the Galilee town of Shlomi yesterday, the worst incident on the northern border in over a year, was not aimed at Israeli military aircraft. Israel Defense Force aircraft did not penetrate Lebanese air space yesterday before the Hezbollah shelling.
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Nor can yesterday's incident, which left one Israeli teenager dead, be ascribed to a change in Hezbollah's behavior. Israel Defense Forces officers claim that for some time now, the Shi'ite organization has not been interested in the question of whether Israel Air Force planes penetrate Lebanese air space.

Instead, the officers contend, the attacks are carried out whenever Hezbollah reckons that it needs them. Whether or not Israeli aircraft pass overhead is not the main question.

For its part, Israel continues to carry out high-altitude reconnaissance flights to take photographs from Lebanon's sky. Such flights were ended temporarily on orders from then prime minister Ehud Barak at the time of the IDF's withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000; but they were resumed five months later after IDF soldiers were kidnapped at Har Dov.

Curtailment of these flight routines has been considered in the past, but the IDF decided not to end them entirely.

The blast that sparked the current round of bloodshed on the northern border went off in Beirut over a week ago. It was a car explosion in which a driver from the Iranian embassy was killed (the casualty was actually a Hezbollah partisan who acted as a liaison between the Lebanese Shi'ite organization and Tehran).

Following rules that have taken hold in years subsequent to the IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah could not respond passively to what it viewed as an assassination perpetrated by Israel. Hezbollah's failure to get on the bandwagon represented by Israel's release of Palestinian prisoners (and secure the release of Lebanese prisoners now incarcerated in facilities in Israel) compelled the Shi'ite organization to try to notch up some public success.

Despite the provocation on the northern border this weekend, it remains to be seen whether Hezbollah genuinely wants a violent escalation at this stage. Tourism is currently booming in Lebanon during the summer holiday. Hezbollah is equivocating about acting in a manner detrimental to the interests of the Lebanese public; and the organization is also wary of provoking a tough American response. For these and other reasons, it is likely that the Shi'ite organization will choose not to ratchet up violence on the northern border beyond a controlled limit.

Tensions in the north have risen concurrently with renewed clashes between Israel and Hamas in the West Bank. A gunfight in Nablus at the end of last week produced the first genuine threat to the future of the hudna. As of last night, however, it appeared that there is still a reasonable chance of putting out the highest flames, thought it seems impossible to put out the fire altogether
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