In the wake of threats by the Islamic fundamentalist Hezbollah movement to launch rocket attacks on northern Israel, the residents of towns and villages along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon spent the weekend preparing for the assault.
But the threatened attacks never materialized.
Hezbollah issued the threat last Friday, in the wake of a devastating June 2 air strike on a base in eastern Lebanon that was used by the Iran-backed movement for training new recruits.
According to various reports, as many as 50 Hezbollah members were killed in the air strike and up to 200 were left wounded.
Within hours of the air strike, and in the early hours of Friday as well, Hezbollah launched Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israel.
By Friday, Israel began massing tanks along the border with Lebanon, and government officials promised to launch a large-scale strike at Hezbollah bases in Lebanon if the rocket attacks continued. But over the weekend, Hezbollah backed down from its threats, with both Iran and Syria reportedly telling the movement’s leaders not to escalate the fighting with Israel.
Although rockets ceased falling on northern Israel, there were reports of skirmishes in southern Lebanon throughout the weekend.
On Friday, Hezbollah units fired on members of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, killing one soldier from Fiji and wounding three others. One Hezbollah member was killed in the firefight.
On Saturday, Hezbollah gunmen attacked an armored patrol of the South Lebanon Army, Israel’s ally in the region, in the eastern sector of the security zone. The SLA patrol returned the fire, killing three members of Hezbollah in the ensuing exchange.
Both Israel’s June 2 air strike in eastern Lebanon, as well as the May 21 abduction of Shi’ite Muslim guerrilla leader Mustafa Dirani, have been the subject of high praise in the Israeli media, which focused on the efficiency of the intelligence information on which the two operations were based.
Commentators here agreed that Israel’s pinpoint bombing and strafing of the training camp last week must have had a powerful effect not only on the Hezbollah command but also on the senior echelons of the Syrian and Iranian leadership.
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