By Victor Kotsev "Soldiers are instructed to open fire. This is the army's decision," a senior Lebanese officer, General Abdul al-Rahman Shitli, said on Wednesday evening while describing Tuesday's skirmish on the Israel-Lebanon border as calculated and approved by the proper channels.
A fully satisfactory account of the events that left a senior Israeli officer and at least four Lebanese dead remains to emerge. It appears, however, that a main beneficiary of the incident is Hezbollah, and despite claims that its leader Hassan Nasrallah had been surprised by it, it is not hard to see the Shi'ite organization's shadow behind the clash.
There are two main versions of what happened: either Hezbollah instigated the clash, through its strong influence in the army, or the army tried to "out-Hezbollah" Hezbollah, perhaps in an attempt to reassert itself over the militia.
Firstly, the background to the crisis. The incident may have much less to do with Israel than with internal Lebanese tensions, and more specifically with the persistent rumors that the United Nations' Special Tribunal for Lebanon will indict members of Hezbollah next month in connection with the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri, Benjamin Joffe-Walt argues in a story published by The Media Line. He writes: "In a matter of weeks, Lebanon is set to face what some local analysts are predicting will be the beginnings of another Lebanese civil war and which others are predicting will be the largest political crisis since the country's former leader was assassinated five years ago."
Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla concurs: "Our own sources in the Lebanese military indicate that they were trying to avoid a major crisis; what they were trying to do in this latest border skirmish was to try to divert attention from the Special Tribunal crisis to the Israeli threat and try to galvanize support among Lebanese factions in support of the Lebanese army."
It is established that the Lebanese army fired first, and that the Israeli soldiers were operating inside Israeli territory, having notified, moreover, both the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese in a proper manner. Lebanese fire on troops of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) working on the border was "wholly unjustified and unwarranted", said US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley on Wednesday, shortly after UNIFIL reached a similar verdict. Despite some early reports to the contrary, Hezbollah did not directly participate in the violence.
Something that stands out is the Lebanese military command's open admission that their side fired first, and that they stand by their soldiers' actions (exemplified by General Shitli's words). This can mean one of two things: either they are desperately trying to cover up the fact that they don't have full control over the rank and file of the army, or that this was indeed a deliberate and calculated policy.