Israeli personnel crossed a few meters into Lebanese territory under the watchful gaze of UN peacekeepers yesterday to recover a military bulldozer hit by a Hezbollah rocket that killed one soldier and seriously wounded another.
Four Israelis in civilian clothes attached a tow line from the bulldozer to a vehicle parked on the Israeli side of the border as the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) stepped up its patrols of adjacent sections of the frontier.
Israeli military sources had initially insisted that the rocket struck south of the border fence, although army radio later confirmed that the bulldozer had strayed into Lebanese territory.
The Tel Aviv daily Haaretz said the vehicle had been clearing a minefield on the frontier, to which Israel withdrew when it ended its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon in May, 2000.
The attack by the Shiite Muslim militant group came amid renewed tension on the border, as Israel rebuffed peace overtures from Syria, the dominant power in Lebanon.
UNIFIL reported Israeli aircraft had violated Lebanese airspace 10 times during the day, in the first such intrusions in a fortnight.
"The United Nations expresses its dismay regarding the large number of Israeli air violations of the Blue Line [UN border demarcation] on 19 January," said UN representative Staffan de Mistura.
"Today's numerous overflights and anti-aircraft fire have disrupted some apparent restraint over the past two weeks in which no Israeli air violations were recorded and a longer period with no Hezbollah anti-aircraft fire," he said.
"The UN reiterates its call upon the Israeli authorities to cease its continuing air violations of the line of withdrawal and Lebanese airspace."
Despite the revelation that the Israeli soldiers had strayed across the frontier, the commander of Israel's northern region, General Benny Gantz, warned that the Hezbollah attack would not go unpunished.
"Those who are on the northern side of the border would do well to be worried," he told reporters, charging that both the Lebanese government and its Syrian patron were "allowing Hezbollah to act at the border."
In what was seen by Israeli MPs as a firm rebuff to Syrian peace overtures in recent weeks, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned the parliamentary foreign affairs and defense committee earlier on Monday that any resumption of peace talks would ultimately force a pullout from the occupied Golan Heights.
The hawkish premier has frequently rejected the idea of withdrawing from the strategic plateau which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and unilaterally annexed 14 years later.
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