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Israel fearful Hezbollah losing ‘self-restraint’ on border

Tensions have been brewing on the Lebanese-Israeli border after Hezbollah set up an outpost inside the occupied territories

Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi on 31 July claimed there is a “weakening in the policy of self-restraint” by Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah. 

Hanegbi was referring to recent actions taken by the group on the shared border with Israel, including a  Hezbollah outpost consisting of a tent erected by the group in April. The Israeli official called this outpost “a children’s game.”

In a feature released by The Cradle last month, Hassan Illaik explains how Hezbollah has significantly beefed up its presence on the Israeli border, setting up multiple posts and watchtowers. 

Last week, footage filmed by the Israeli army showed a group of Hezbollah operatives patrolling the border near an Israeli fence. 

In early July, an armed and equipped joint force of Hezbollah operatives and Lebanese army soldiers stormed the Israeli border – crossing the UN-recognized Blue Line in protest against Israel’s annexation of Ghajar. 

The northernmost section of Ghajar is an internationally recognized Lebanese territory but was absorbed by Israel at the start of the month. 

At the end of the 2006 war, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1701, prohibiting any military presence between the Litani River and the Lebanon-Israel border, except for the Lebanese army and international peacekeeping forces of UNIFIL.

This formerly prohibited area now consists of numerous Hezbollah “brigades and battalions prepared to launch an attack into occupied Palestine when ordered to do so,” Illaik cites Israeli experts as saying. 

As a result of the decline in Hezbollah’s “self-restraint,” as Hanegbi put it, the municipalities and residents of border villages such as Kfar Shufa have been more confident and more active in confronting Israeli violations and incursions. 

This has been evident from a recent series of Lebanese responses to Israel’s annexation of Ghajar and other violations, including digging plans for the construction of a defensive border wall. 

On 30 July, protesters in southern Lebanon destroyed an Israeli fence on the border, setting foot on an area forbidden to Lebanese since before the 2006 war. Earlier in the month, the residents of Kfar Shuba, under directives from its municipality and with support from the army, dug a dirt road along the UN-recognized Blue Line – effectively facilitating the entry of Lebanese citizens to occupied land which they had not been able to access since the late 1970s. 

Last month, the army was deployed to Kfar Shuba for the first time since the Israeli withdrawal in 2000. 

https://new.thecradle.co/articles/israel-fearful-hezbollah-losing-self-restraint-on-border