The Lebanese Hizbollah movement will “now retaliate directly against any Israeli troops who shoot civilians on the Lebanese side of the border,” a party source told the Daily Star newspaper on Wednesday.
The warning came a day after Hizbollah's anti-aircraft batteries fired on Israeli warplanes flying over the western sector of the border district.
A UNIFIL officer said that one of the two reported incidents involved an aircraft being targeted by eight to 10 rounds of anti-aircraft fire from just south of At-Tiri village near Bint Jbeil, according to the paper.
It was the first time that Israeli warplanes had been shot at by the movement since overflights resumed last October and, according to the Hizbollah source, marked the beginning of a new retaliatory policy, the paper said.
"We will return fire if the Israelis violate our border," the source said. "This is the decision we have taken. We cannot keep silent on the daily violations any longer and we want to make the Israelis understand this."
He said that retaliation would not just be confined to Israeli aircraft flying in Lebanese airspace.
"If the Israelis kill or wound Lebanese civilians from one of their outposts, then we are obliged to return fire directly," the source told the paper.
"If they fired from their post on Sheikh Abbad Hill, for example, then we will return fire at the Abbad Hill post."
Israeli troops have killed three civilians and wounded at least 29, four of them this year, in border demonstrations, mainly at the former Fatima Gate crossing in Kfar Kila and at Sheikh Abbad Hill.
The latest incident occurred on May 26 when a civilian was shot in the leg at Sheikh Abbad Hill during a demonstration marking the first anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal.
According to the paper, Hizbollah's twin-barreled 23mm anti-aircraft guns and shoulder-fired SA-7 missiles do not pose a serious threat to Israel's warplanes and helicopter gunships.
Between 1985 and 2000, only one Israeli aircraft was downed over Lebanon: Ron Arad's F-4 Phantom in 1986, and that was due to a bomb that exploded prematurely rather than ground fire.
The prospect of shootouts blazing across the border fence, however, is likely to increase the level of tension beyond the existing theater of conflict in the occupied Shabaa Farms to along the border with Israel.
Israel conveyed strong warnings to Damascus last month that Syrian military positions in Lebanon would be targeted if the Hizbollah continued attacking Israeli forces occupying the farms.
In mid-April, a Syrian radar station was destroyed by Israeli warplanes in response to a Hizbollah missile attack in which an Israeli soldier was killed.
On Wednesday, Israel's Maariv newspaper quoted a senior Israeli security source as saying that Damascus had taken the threats seriously and asked Hizbollah to "calm down." – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
