Israel and Hezbollah signalled yesterday their rare flare-up in fighting across the Israel-Lebanon border was over, after the Lebanese guerrillas killed two Israeli troops in retaliation for a deadly air strike in Syria last week.
Israel said it had received a message from UNIFIL, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, that Hezbollah was not interested in further escalation.
In Beirut, a Lebanese source briefed on the situation told Reuters that Israel informed Hezbollah via UNIFIL “that it will make do with what happened yesterday and it does not want the battle to expand.”
Asked on Israel’s Army Radio whether Hezbollah had sought to de-escalate, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said: “There are lines of coordination between us and Lebanon via UNIFIL and such a message was indeed received from Lebanon.”
A salvo of Hezbollah guided missiles killed an Israeli infantry major and a conscript soldier as they rode in unmarked civilian vehicles along the Lebanese border on Wednesday.
Israel then launched an artillery and air barrage, and a Spanish peacekeeper was killed. Spain’s ambassador to the UN blamed the Israeli fire for his death.
It was the most serious clash on that border since 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought a 34-day war. Yesterday, the frontier was quiet, though Lebanese media reported overflights by Israeli air force drones.
Both sides appear to share an interest in avoiding further escalation.
Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which fought Israel to a standstill in 2006, is busy supporting Damascus in Syria’s civil war, and the level of destruction in Lebanon during the 2006 conflict could also be weighing on its calculations.