Israel to intensify flights over Lebanon

According to Israeli military sources, Israel is planning to intensify controversial military flights over Lebanon. General Alon Friedman, the head of the Israeli army's Northern Command, said on Feb. 7: "We are going to continue our flights and even bolster our aerial activities." The United Nations has warned that the reconnaissance flights undermine the "credibility" of UN peacekeepers and Lebanese armed forces and "compromise overall efforts to stabilize the situation." On Feb. 2, Major General Alain Pellegrini, outgoing commander of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), said that Israeli warplanes were flying over Lebanon on a daily basis. He said: "It's obviously to control the territory, but it could also be to provoke." Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora has ordered the country's army to "confront" any new violation of Lebanese sovereignty after Israeli forces allegedly moved into Lebanese territory to clear mines. "It is a new violation in addition to the Israeli air violations of Lebanese sovereignty which never stopped after the cease-fire declared last August," he said. An exchange of fire on Feb. 7 came after an Israeli bulldozer moved in to clear unexploded ordnance which Israel insisted was on its own soil, north of a security fence but south of Lebanon. Liam McDowell, a spokesman for UNIFIL, said the exchange was "initiated" by the Lebanese army. He said that UNIFIL was assessing whether Israeli troops had crossed the "Blue Line" into Lebanon, as alleged by officials in Beirut. UNIFIL reported that five Lebanese soldiers were wounded in the incident–in which an Israeli tank fired two rounds on a Lebanese army outpost and armored vehicle in response to Lebanese gunfire. Both countries denied any casualties. The shooting incident was the first at the Israeli-Lebanese border since Israeli troops left Lebanon in October after the war with Hezbollah that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon and at least 160 Israelis. It was also the first border incident directly involving the Lebanese and Israeli armies for around three decades, after Lebanese forces redeployed to the border area after the August cease-fire.