Behind the rockets

Even though everyone involved is seeking to lower the media profile, it seems disconcerting developments are taking place along the borders of Israel, Lebanon and Syria. The Katyusha fire from South Lebanon at the Galilee panhandle on Tuesday is one manifestation of this trend, but the reasons for the tension taking hold of the region are not immediately evident.

Even the rocket fire - although as IDF Northern Command officers like to remind us, it was only a single short-caliber projectile - cannot be considered a negligible or unimportant incident. It's true that personal safety in the Galilee is relatively high, and that the bed-and-breakfast industry is flourishing, but the rocket strikes have become somewhat more frequent.

Tuesday's incident is the fourth this year, after just two such incidents over the previous two years, since the end of the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006. Yesterday the Lebanese Army discovered four additional Katyushas ready to be fired in the southern village of Houla, where the lone rocket was launched the day before. The Israel Defense Forces said the Katyusha, which landed in an open area outside Kiryat Shmona, was not preceded by an intelligence warning. What did precede it, however, was a hastily-coordinated visit by Defense Minister Ehud Barak to the Galilee and Golan Heights.

In remarks to the press during that visit, Barak reiterated his usual talking points: concern over Hezbollah's rearmament, the Lebanese government's responsibility, the importance Israel attributes to maintaining the deterrent capability it built up in the 2006 war, and Jerusalem's red line regarding "destabilizing weapons" entering Lebanese territory.

For the last two years, this last phrase has been a codename for a specific weapon, and all sides involved know exactly what it refers to. Israel has long been concerned that Syria might provide Hezbollah with advanced anti-aircraft missiles that would allow the group to down Israeli planes and helicopters on intelligence-gathering missions over Lebanon.

There have been several recent attempts to smuggle in such weapon systems, but all were ultimately thwarted through Israeli pressure bolstered by international mediators. Such smuggling attempts seem likely to recur, which is one of the factors contributing to the cross-border tension.

In a closed-door UN Security Council meeting Tuesday over the situation in South Lebanon, Terje Roed-Larsen (the UN secretary-general's special envoy for implementing the Israel-Hezbollah cease-fire) said Hezbollah's weapons stores are endangering Lebanon's future, and peace and stability throughout the region. It was a rarely-heard remark, testifying to the UN's familiarity with the state of affairs in the region.

The increase in rocket fire is also apparently linked to the internal Lebanese situation - the difficulty in establishing a new governing coalition nearly five months after parliamentary elections, Hezbollah's activity in the country's south, and the performance of UNIFIL peacekeepers and Lebanese Army troops near the Israeli border.

In the past, Israeli figures often claimed that nothing happened in South Lebanon without the explicit authorization of Hezbollah. Still, all of the rockets have been attributed to Palestinian or Lebanese Sunni extremist groups, rather than to Hezbollah itself.

There are, therefore, two possibilities: that these factions operate against Hezbollah's instructions, or with the group's tacit approval. Israeli intelligence has yet to provide a clear answer to this question. What is clear is that UNIFIL's activity has been limited - the UN peacekeepers rarely enter Lebanon's rural south, as any such monitoring is met by Hezbollah opposition, and resultant disturbances by the population.

UNIFIL's usefulness is therefore fading, meaning that a fundamental component of Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, has never been implemented. The border between Lebanon and Syria remains completely penetrable, and weapons smuggling there continues unabated.