Lebanon PM: Israel tried to change battle rules with border attack

The file photo shows Israeli army Merkava IV battle tank conducting maneuvers near the Lebanese border. (By AFP)

Lebanon’s prime minister warns sternly about potential escalation in the aftermath of a recent Israeli border incursion, saying the occupying regime is trying to manipulate the rules of engagement with the country.

"The enemy is trying to change the rules of battle with Lebanon," Hassan Diab tweeted on Tuesday. “I call for caution in coming days because I fear the situation will deteriorate in light of heightened tensions on our border,” he added.

A day earlier, Israel fired dozens of shells into Lebanon’s Shebaa Farms, which Tel Aviv has occupied since 1967. A Reuters’ witness counted dozens of Israeli shells hitting the occupied area.

The regime claimed it launched the attack after an attempt by Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement to “infiltrate” into the occupied territories.

The movement has roundly rejected the claim, saying the regime has come up with the account to falsely claim a “victory” against the resistance and try to psych up its forces.

Implications for UNIFIL’s mandate

"The enemy is trying to change the UNIFIL's mandate,” Diab added.

The force deployed by the United Nations to Lebanon’s southern border has been monitoring the situation there since 2006, when Israel was forced by Hezbollah to withdraw after launching a 33-day war on the country.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun also addressed the unwelcome implications that the Israeli aggression could have for the UNIFIL.

“The attacks constitute a threat to stability in the south especially that the United Nations Security Council will soon discuss the mandate of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL)," he said.

According to Lebanon’s Elnashra news outlet, Aoun also said the Lebanese cabinet had decided to complain to the UN over the border incident.

‘Nasrallah dictating agenda to Israel’

Addressing the recent developments, Amiram Levin, former commander of the Israeli military’s Northern Command, said “It is [Hezbollah’s Secretary General Seyyed Hassan] Nasrallah that dictates the agenda to Israel.”

He cited the case of the Israeli incursion -- that came with apparently no provocation on the part of Hezbollah -- as an instance of the regime going off half-cocked due to its fear of the resistance group.

“The security incident of the last day is shameful,” Levin said.

Former Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, meanwhile, acknowledged the regime’s fearfulness of Hezbollah.

He attributed the trigger-readiness of the regime’s forces to Israel's assassination of a Hezbollah member near the Syrian capital Damascus last Monday. The atrocity warranted outspoken warnings from the resistance movements.

Israel in ‘fear’ after Hezbollah fighter killed in Damascus

Israeli media say the occupied territories are overwhelmed by "fear and alertness” about the possibility of a retaliatory attack by Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement after the popular organization announced the martyrdom of one of its members in an Israeli aggression on the Syrian soil.

Lieberman said the entire northern part of the territories that are under Israeli occupation have become “crippled” since the assassination of Ali Kamel Mohsen, who was martyred during the latest Israeli aggression against Syria that was staged from the Tel Aviv-occupied Golan Heights.

Although Hezbollah has said it reserves the right to retaliate for the atrocity, the movement asserted on Monday that “the answer to the martyrdom of [our] brother,  Ali Kamel Mohsen, in the vicinity of Damascus airport has not been given yet.”

“Zionist occupiers must still wait for that answer and their punishment at the hands of the resistance forces,” it added, refuting Tel Aviv’s claims that it tried to strike the occupied territories in an act of revenge.