Israel's Provocations

Israel's Provocations

"Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored "blue line" on an almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah's military doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire Katyusha rockets into Israel only in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah's leadership; this indeed has been the pattern.

In the process of its violations, Israel has terrorized the general population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians. This past February, for instance, 15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock in southern Lebanon. Israel has assassinated its enemies in the streets of Lebanese cities and continues to occupy Lebanon's Shebaa Farms area, while refusing to hand over the maps of mine fields that continue to kill and cripple civilians in southern Lebanon more than six years after the war supposedly ended. What peace did Hizbullah shatter?" - Hizbullah's attacks stem from Israeli incursions into Lebanon By Anders Strindberg

For the period from 21 January 2006 to 18 July 2006:

"Persistent and provocative Israeli air incursions, occasionally reaching deep into Lebanese airspace and generating sonic booms over populated areas, remained a matter of serious concern. The pattern identified in my previous reports continued, whereby the aircraft would sometimes fly out to sea and enter Lebanese airspace north of the UNIFIL area of operation, thus avoiding direct observation and verification by UNIFIL. The air incursions violate Lebanon's sovereignty and territorial integrity, elevate tension and disrupt the fragile calm along the Blue Line. A reduction in the number of air incursions in April contributed to an atmosphere of relative calm along the Blue Line, but this trend was reversed in May." - UN

"Since Israel withdrew from Lebanon six years ago, then, it hasn't given its northern neighbor even a single day of quiet. The more the UN reports repeat themselves, the less attention the media pays them." - 'Respecting Lebanon's Sovereignty'

It has been a pattern:

"UN Official Confirms Israeli Violation of Lebanese Territory " Mistura said that the U.N. peacekeeping force recently observed the Ghajar village on the eastern side of the Blue Line with helicopters and found that Israeli troops violated the Blue Line and intruded into the Lebanese territory by about 20 meters."

Israel must stop occupying the Sheb'a Farms!

"May 13, 2005 Repeated shelling occurred across the Blue Line by both Israel and Hezbollah around the Sheb'a Farms.

June 19, 2005 Hezbollah won all seats in Southern Lebanon in the parliamentary elections.

June 29, 2005 Hezbollah and the IDF engaged in a heavy exchange of fire in the Sheb'a farms area."
- Security Council Report

Israel routinely takes Palestinians, Lebanese hostage. Israel must let all the Lebanese hostages go!


In 2000, "Human Rights Watch today called on Israel to release immediately all Lebanese it holds as hostages and to compensate them for their unlawful detention." Israel ignored this and continued to hold 3 hostages, these are people that Hezbollah wants freed.

"Why have successive governments in Israel refused to free the Lebanese hostages, despite their retreat from the major part of Lebanon over five years ago? And why do they refuse to apply the previous UN resolutions passed in the years 1948, 1967, 1973 concerning the retreat of their occupation of Nkhaileh, seven Lebanese border villages, the Shabaa farms and the Kfarchouba hights?"

"The Lebanese resistance has the right to do all it can to liberate the Lebanese detainees as well as the remaining occupied territories. " "The aggression that Lebanon is today subjected to is about much more than the two Israeli hostages or three Lebanese hostages."

"The agreement between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government on the 7-point plan to implement a cease-fire and follow this up with steps to address the outstanding issues with Israel. The plan calls for

1. A mutual release of prisoners
2. Israeli troops withdrawing to the demarcated frontier and allowing displaced civilians to return home
3. Israel's withdrawal from the occupied Sheba Farms/Kfar Shuba Hills and placing them under temporary UN control
4. Extending Lebanese government authority throughout all southern Lebanon
5. Expanding the existing UN force in south Lebanon
6. Reinvigorating the 1949 armistice agreement
7. Reconstructing the south
   

This important agreement deserves far more consideration than it seems to have received to date. - Let's Have an American-Israeli 7-point Plan

"Hezbollah has vowed to continue fighting Israel in order to free the Shebaa Farms which the Jewish state had seized from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, but is now claimed by Lebanon with the approval of Damascus." - Uncertainty as Hezbollah backs Lebanon PM truce plan

"Lebanon's prime minister Foad Siniora made an appeal [the above 7 point plan] during his visit to Washington for the end of the occupation of the disputed Arab farms and the release of the prisoners but to no avail. Israel is holding these strategic small strip of land saying that they belong to Syria and that they will only be evacuated once a negotiated settlement has been made with the remaining major Arab country.
Syria and Lebanon both insist that this farm area is Lebanese but so far no change has happened. The prisoners are also a source of pain to Lebanese. Jailed by Israel during the '82-2000 occupation of south Lebanon, the Israelis are refusing to release the remaining Lebanese without a peace agreement with Lebanon.
The state of affairs of Palestinians is also an important issue for Hizbullah which considers itself a patriotic Lebanese, Arab and Islamic movement. Under an unjust economic siege ever since the Palestinian people democratically elected a government not to the liking of the Americans and the Israelis, the world single power and its ally arbitrarily imposed an economic siege barring any transfer of money (even from Arab and Muslim counties). Palestinians like Lebanese have a problem with the long term imprisonment by Israel of their citizens. Israeli jails are crowded with nearly 10,000 Palestinians many of them (literally thousands) are held without charge or trial" - The attack on Lebanon has produced strange role reversals