The Israeli military was uprooting more trees along its border with Lebanon today following yesterday's clash with the Lebanese army, that left five people dead.There are still more questions to be answered, but this is a good start--and a more welcome story to wake to than yesterday's.
Operations were "continuing as usual", a spokesman for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said.
Defence minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio: "We are continuing to operate. It will not be legitimate if they try to disrupt today, and we will have to respond."
Yesterday's clash broke out after the Israeli army cut down a tree on the border.
The Lebanese army admitted that its soldiers opened fire on IDF troops in the confrontation, the most serious along the border since the war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah four years ago.
In a statement issued to the news agency AFP, a spokesman said: "The Lebanese army opened fire first at Israeli soldiers who entered Lebanese territory ... This constituted defence of our sovereignty and is an absolute right."
Israel continued to insist that its forces did not cross the blue line, the UN name for the border. It says an IDF unit was carrying out routine maintenance work to remove a tree obscuring its sight lines into Lebanon – but from Israeli territory – when the firing began.
Unifil, the UN force that monitors the border, today said the tree was in Israeli territory. [emphasis added]
Lebanon, for its part is continuing to insist that cutting the tree was an incursion into their territory. On that score, the Syrian press SANA quotes Nasrallah as claiming that Lebanon's actions yesterday were 'heroic' and Syria's President Assad decrying "the heinous aggression launched by Israel on the Lebanese territories."
Technorati Tag: Lebanon and UNIFIL.
1 comment:
A reminder the Lebanese consider parts of Israel to be Lebanese territory.
Which explains the reaction on the Arab side to yesterday's incident.
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