Lebanese officials said a dozen Israeli warplanes violated Lebanese airspace on Tuesday and overnight into Wednesday, flying close to the ground in several sorties over southern Lebanon.
According to foreign media reports, the planes attacked a target near the Lebanon-Syria border.
The Israeli military had no comment.
A Lebanese army statement says the last of the sorties was at 2 a.m. local time Wednesday. It says four warplanes, which flew in over the southernmost coastal town of Naqoura, flew for several hours over villages in south Lebanon before leaving Lebanese airspace.
It says similar flights by eight other warplanes were conducted Tuesday.
Israel has been deeply concerned that chemical or advanced weaponry from Syria could make its way into the hands of the south-Lebanon based Hezbollah terror group due to the chaos of the Syrian civil war, and has said on several occasions that the transfer of chemical weapons to non-state actors, especially Hezbollah, would be a casus belli.
Reuters cited an unnamed Western diplomat and anonymous security source saying the planes had attacked a target near the border.
“There was definitely a hit in the border area,” the source told the news agency.
Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said Sunday that such transfer of arms “would be crossing a line that would demand a different approach.”
The Lebanese army report does not mention if the planes entered Syrian territory, although the area of Lebanon where the flights took place borders southern Syria. The flights were not corroborated by an Israeli source.
Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace are not uncommon but Beirut officials say they have increased in the past few days.
On Tuesday, Air Force chief Amir Eshel said Israel needed to be wary of both conventional and non conventional weapons finding their way out of Syria.
“There is in Syria an enormous arsenal of weapons, some state of the art and some non conventional. All of it could find its way to our borders and not just to our backyards,” he said.
Lebanon said Wednesday that Israel Air Force jets entered its territory overnight, part of apparently increased air activitythat comes as Israel has repeatedly expressed concern about chemical weapons in neighboring Syria falling out of government control.
A Lebanese army statement said that four IAF warplanes entered Lebanese air space at 4.30 p.m on Tuesday. They were replaced four hours later by another group of planes which overflew southern Lebanon until 2 a.m and a third mission took over, finally leaving at 7.55 a.m on Wednesday morning.
Lebanon frequently complains that Israeli jets overfly its territory. However the recent activity was much more concentrated than usual.
There was no explanation for the operations in the region, bordering southern Syria. The statement made no mention of planes entering Syrian airspace.
Israel's vice premier Silvan Shalom said on Sunday that any sign that Syria's grip on its chemical weapons is slipping, as President Bashar Assad fights rebels trying to overthrow him,could trigger Israeli military strikes.
Israel is waging an offensive, defensive and intelligence campaign, a complex and potentially explosive war between wars, Israel Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel said Tuesday.
Speaking at the Eighth Annual International Ilan Ramon Space Conference in Herzliya, Eshel said Israel was fighting “a campaign between wars” and that it was doing its utmost “to keep [our] efforts beneath the level at which war breaks out.”
“And if there is no alternative – maybe it will.”
Eshel described the Middle East as an area of weakened sovereignty and growing threats, saying that the processes at work “are tectonic” and that, right on our border, “no one has any idea what will happen” after the collapse of President Bashar Assad’s regime.
He indicated that the term ”Arab Spring” doesn’t adequately describe the upheaval raging through the Middle East, Syria in particular, and said that it is “a season that doesn’t exist in the regional calendar.”
Speaking of Syria he stressed the threat of both chemical and “state-of-the-art” conventional weapons falling into the hands of non-state actors. The air force “almost exclusively” shoulders the burden of Israel’s defense against these threats, he said.
Advanced conventional weapons, like radar and land-to-sea missiles, however, may have already been transferred into Hezbollah’s arsenals in the past weeks. “The motivation is growing and there is no guarantee that such weapons have not already been passed to Hezbollah’s hands,” said Lt. Col. Assaf Librati, the air force spokesman.
Israel has said on several occasions that the transfer of chemical weapons to non-state actors, especially Hezbollah, would be a casus belli. Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said Sunday that such transfer of arms “would be crossing a line that would demand a different approach.”
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