‘No country in the world would not protest nor react to military overflights’

Nicholas Blanford
Daily Star staff

Israel must cease its almost daily violations of Lebanese airspace if it wants an end to Hizbullah’s cross-border anti-aircraft (AA) fire, the top United Nations official in Lebanon says.
Staffan de Mistura, the UN secretary-general’s representative to South Lebanon, said Israel has no justification in continuing the overflights, which apart from being breaches of international law also encourage Hizbullah to retaliate with AA fire above Israeli towns.
“No country in the world would not protest nor react to military overflights deep into its own territory,” De Mistura told The Daily Star. “Apart from the fact that overflights are a violation of the Blue Line, they are also a substantial violation of the airspace of a sovereign country, even when they don’t cross the Blue Line. In that context, we have to protest doubly.”
On Sunday, Israeli warplanes flew the length of Lebanon, breaking the sound barrier along the coast north of Beirut to Tripoli. The air violations were greeted by two bursts of fire across the border from Hizbullah’s AA batteries. Up to two unexploded 57mm AA rounds crashed into a house in Kfar Yuval, 1 kilometer south of the Lebanese border. No one was hurt in the incident but some damage was caused to the building.
“The air force actions in the north (of Israel) are drawing Hizbullah anti-aircraft fire. This fire is not directed at (Israeli) aircraft. This is directed at the State of Israel,” Israeli Air Force commander Major General Dan Halutz was quoted as saying in The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
The Post quoted air force commanders as denying that Israeli aircraft had crossed into Lebanese airspace Sunday.
The Israeli military consistently plays down the overflights, sometimes claiming they are merely routine reconnaissance patrols and at other times denying they entered Lebanese airspace at all.
Instead, Israel claims Hizbullah is deliberately seeking to increase tensions by firing AA rounds across the border. But the United Nations has little sympathy for this view, saying that it is Israel’s overflights in Lebanese airspace that cause Hizbullah to open fire in the first place.
“Usually when there are no overflights, there is no anti-aircraft fire,” said UNIFIL spokesman Timur Goksel, adding “but we cannot always be sure that all the overflights we hear are in Lebanese airspace.”
High-flying Israeli jets are invisible to the naked eye and can only be detected by the rumble of the engines which makes pinpointing them almost impossible. But there is no mistaking Israeli overflights deep inside Lebanon, De Mistura said.
“Their main argument is security, and that argument may hold along the Blue Line but it certainly does not justify sonic booms nor flying deep inside Lebanese territory over Beirut, Tripoli and elsewhere,” he said. “If this happened in any other part of the world, there would be major protestations.”
Hizbullah’s anti-aircraft fire is also a violation of the Blue Line and is clearly not aimed at Israeli aircraft, De Mistura added.
“The most recent case (in Kfar Yuval) was most unfortunate as the anti-aircraft fire took place not only across the Blue Line but, in fact, was not connected to overflights at that moment,” he said.
Hizbullah’s antiquated 57mm anti-aircraft guns are incapable of shooting down high-flying Israeli warplanes. Instead, Hizbullah fires the 31 centimeter-long shells across the border where they explode with a loud bang thousands of meters above Israeli towns and villages, sowing alarm among residents and spattering the area with shrapnel.
Despite the clear tit-for-tat nature of the AA fire and despite diplomatic pressure from the United States as well as the UN, the overflights have continued uninterrupted since October 2000.
De Mistura said that pressuring Hizbullah to halt its cross-border AA fire would be made easier if Israel first ceased the overflights.
“If there were no overflights, the willingness and capacity of the international community to press upon the Lebanese and Hizbullah to stop the anti-aircraft fire would be reinforced,” he said.

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