FOUR Lebanese soldiers were killed and at least four wounded when Israeli tanks opened fire at Lebanese positions on the border with Israel shortly after noon on Tuesday.
Al Mannar TV news reported that a senior Israeli officer was killed in the fighting.
Just before 2.00pm Israeli helicopters arrived on the scene with Al-Jadid TV reporting shots fired by the helicopters toward the Lebanese town of Adeisseh. This firing, plus intermittent artillery fire, set a number of homes alight, also killing a Lebanese reporter.
The Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri condemned the Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty, while the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, urged officials to file a complaint against Israel with the UN Security Council.
Hariri told UNIFIL that he expected the UN to pressure Israel to implement UN Resolution 1701, which called for the demilitarisation of the area within the blue line, where UN Interim Forces In Lebanon are stationed.
The clashes on the Lebanese border follow Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip on Monday morning.
The Israeli warplanes bombed the home of a senior Hamas military leader in the central Gaza Strip, leaving 42 civilians injured.
Al-Qassam Brigades leader Alaa Ad-Danaf’s home was destroyed, along with five other surrounding homes, by a missile from an Israeli F16 fighter jet.
Earlier, Israeli warplanes had launched two pre-dawn raids on the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday.
The Israeli attacks came as the US government informed the Palestinian Authority that it had to agree to direct talks with Israel or pay a very heavy price for any refusal, losing all American support.
On Sunday, Hamas held the Arab League responsible for the escalation in Israeli military action against the Gaza Strip. The resistance movement accused Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, as well as the Arab League’s committee, of ‘submission’ to US and Israeli pressure.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the Arab League’s Follow-up Committee decision to endorse the resumption of direct talks was providing encouragement for the Israeli onslaught.
He said: ‘The committee has given the Israeli occupation the pretext and coverage they needed to attack our people and continue with settlement activities and displacement.’
On the previous Thursday, the Follow-up Committee of the Arab Peace Initiative had met with Abbas in Cairo, and given its support for Abbas to re-enter into direct negotiations.
The US and Israel, Obama and Netanyahu are now marching forward arm-in-arm to try to impose a settlement on the Palestinians to establish a Bantustan and not a state, while in the Lebanon they are seeking to use the establishment of an International Tribunal into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri as a device to restart the Lebanese civil war, in which Israel will intervene to support the pro-US Phalangist factions.
Tension in the Lebanon has been ratcheted up in recent months by the International Tribunal. This tribunal has already refused even to probe whether Israel was responsible for the murder of Hariri, and is expected to blame Hezbollah and Syria, in an attempt to bring factional and religious tensions in the Lebanon to explosion point. It is then that the Israelis will intervene.
Workers and trade unions in the West must demand Hands off the Lebanon! and Hands off Hezbollah and Syria!
They must impose a 100 per cent trade and cultural boycott of Israel until the Palestinians win their own state, with Jerusalem as its capital, with the settlements abandoned and with every refugee having the right to return. They must also support the Third Palestinian Intifada which will be the way that the Palestinian masses reply to the Obama-Netanyahu offensive and the treachery of the Abbas leadership.
