Israelis Attack S. Lebanon for 5th Day

For a fifth day Monday, Israel struck at southern Lebanese villages suspected of harboring anti-Israeli guerrillas with an early-morning air raid that police said killed a family of four and wounded six other civilians in Jibsheet.

“Everyone in the south is with Hezbollah--some talk, others fight,” said Abdel-Amir Harb, a Jibsheet resident speaking of the pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim organization whose guerrillas are the targets of the raids.

“Does this look like a Hezbollah stronghold?” asked Harb, who gave reporters a tour of his three-story house in Jibsheet that was struck last Thursday by Israeli helicopter gunships. No one in the house was hurt in that raid.

When he was asked why his house was targeted, Harb’s wife answered, saying: “You have enemies, you have friends. Your enemies tell the Israelis that your house is a Hezbollah center.”

In nearby Ain Beswaar, Hezbollah fighters said the village school was hit in a raid last week. “The people fled (some time ago) so the school is empty, but does that mean it’s our base?” one asked.

Random shelling between Shiite militiamen and the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army has been a fact of life in southern Lebanon for years.

But Israel’s confidence in the SLA, a militia organization whose officers are mostly Christians, was shaken by an attack May 19 during which Hezbollah overran a strategic SLA outpost, hoisted its flag and left behind photographs of its dead leader, Sheik Abbas Moussawi, who was killed in an Israeli raid in February.

Four SLA men were killed and four were taken captive in the May 19 attack.

Israel depends on the SLA to do much of the patrolling in the Israeli security zone, a narrow strip of Lebanese territory along the Lebanese-Israeli frontier held by Israel to help protect settlements on the Israeli side of the border from guerrilla attacks and infiltration.

Residents of the zone say that young men are drafted into the militia by force, something they describe as a factor in the poor performance of the SLA.

On May 21, Israeli helicopter gunships struck at half a dozen small villages suspected of harboring Hezbollah guerrilla bases. A guerrilla training camp in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley also was hit, resulting in the deaths of eight fighters and injuries to 18 others, according to security sources.

“Israel put the SLA on the sidelines,” a Hezbollah fighter said Sunday. “Let Israel come. We’re ready for them.”

About 1,000 Israeli soldiers are present in the security zone to train and support the SLA in case of a major problem.