Dubai: The Israeli regime is not interested in a further escalation along its northern border, a government official said Thursday, a day after the worst exchange of fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah since a 2006 war.
Two Israeli soldiers and a Spanish peacekeeper were killed.
The Israeli official spoke on condition of anonymity to Israel Radio after an emergency security meeting in Tel Aviv, which lasted into the early hours of Thursday and included regime leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon and military chief of staff Benny Gantz, reported the DPA news agency.
The Hezbollah attack appeared to be in response to a January 18 Israeli air strike in southern Syria that killed several Hezbollah members and an Iranian general.
The peacekeeper in southern Lebanon was killed as Israel retaliated with air strikes and artillery fire, a UN spokesman and Spanish officials said.
Hezbollah’s attack on the Israeli-occupied Lebanese Sheba Farms led to two Israeli military vehicles being hit directly, killing a company commander with the rank of captain and a sergeant. Seven occupation soldiers were also wounded.
The official said that the Israelis also held Iran responsible for the incident and would not allow it to open another front against it on the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan Heights.
Publicly however, the Israelis claimed that they received a message from Hezbollah saying it was backing away from further violence, a day after the worst deadly clashes in years erupted along the border.
Ya’alon said Israel had received a message from a UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon that Hezbollah was not interested in further escalation.
“Indeed, a message was received,” he said. “There are lines of coordination between us and Lebanon via UNIFIL (the UN force) and such a message was indeed received from Lebanon.”
In Beirut, Hezbollah officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
“I can’t say whether the events are behind us,” Ya’alon added in a separate radio interview. “Until the area completely calms down, the Israel defence forces will remain prepared and ready.”
Spanish UN ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi told reporters in New York the fire that killed the Spaniard “came from the Israeli side.”
At an emergency meeting in New York, the UN Security Council condemned the killing of the peacekeeper “in the strongest terms”.
Neither the Security Council nor the office of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon confirmed which party was responsible for the blue helmet’s death.
But Ban was “deeply concerned” over the deteriorating security situation along the Israel-Lebanon frontier and called for “maximum calm and restraint,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
— with inputs from Reuters
