Israel, Hezbollah Revert to Sporadic Shelling in Lebanon

Sporadic shelling resumed across the Israeli-Lebanese front Saturday, a day after Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas exchanged their worst cross-border attacks in almost a year.

The two sides had said after Friday’s fighting that they were suspending retaliatory attacks. But few expected the relative calm to last amid the prospect of Israel pulling out from southern Lebanon by July without a peace agreement that satisfies Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon. The Israeli army invaded Lebanon in 1978 and created a 9-mile-deep buffer zone along the border in 1985 to deter guerrilla attacks on northern Israel.

“The latest flare-up gives another measure of the importance of a Syrian-Israeli agreement for the stability not only of south Lebanon but of the whole area,” said Chibli Mallat, a leading scholar and lawyer.

“I am afraid more people will die unnecessarily in the absence of a substantially larger framework of understanding,” Mallat said.

There was occasional shelling Saturday on areas facing the eastern sector of the Israeli-occupied zone, a routine occurrence unlike the violence that reached a peak Friday.

Hezbollah fired Katyusha rockets onto northern Israeli settlements Thursday, killing one soldier and wounding 26 civilians, after Israel and its ally, the South Lebanon Army, killed two Lebanese women and hurt 12 more civilians.

Hezbollah launched more rockets Friday, after Israel retaliated against its earlier attack by knocking out electrical power in parts of Lebanon and a section of the Beirut-Damascus highway. Israeli jets also targeted a guerrilla weapons depot during Friday’s raids.

“Israel and Syria are setting the ground rules and tempo for the coming months,” political commentator Michael Young said.

“Syria showed, through the Hezbollah attacks, that the possibility of border tension exists during and after an Israeli withdrawal. Israel warned the Lebanese and Syrians and assured its public . . . it will retaliate,” Young said.

The Lebanese government has repeatedly warned that an Israeli withdrawal without a deal that returns to Syria the Golan Heights--seized during the 1967 Middle East War--will subject Israel to cross-border attacks.