At least one Israeli soldier was killed and two were injured when Hizbullah guerrillas fired a rocket at their patrol vehicle on the Israeli-Lebanon border yesterday. In other violence, two Palestinians were killed and at least 46 injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israeli soldiers shelled the region near Hebron in the West Bank yesterday evening, killing Shaker al-Manasra (25), who was hit in the neck and Essam al-Tawil (29), who was wounded in the stomach, Palestinian security officials said. Another 20 Palestinians were injured in heavy shelling near Hebron, they said.
The violence poses more problems for an incoming Israeli "national unity government" already facing intensifying confrontations with the Palestinians.
The attack on the Israeli soldiers, in the disputed Sheba Farms border area, came on the ninth anniversary of an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon which killed a Hizbullah commander, his wife and child. Israel responded to yesterday's attack with an hour of counterfire at suspected Hizbullah targets.
Hizbullah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, threatened further attacks on Israel, and praised Wednesday's attack in which a Palestinian driver ploughed into a crowd at a bus stop killing seven Israeli soldiers and a civilian.
Israel's pull-out from Lebanon last May was the one great success of Mr Ehud Barak's outgoing government. If the border now heats up, it will be a major new headache for the incoming Israeli administration, headed by Likud leader Mr Ariel Sharon, in which Mr Barak has agreed to serve as Minister of Defence. Israel is already involved in a mini-war with the Palestinians.
Heavily defeated by Mr Sharon in prime ministerial elections on February 6th, Mr Barak has brought further humiliation on himself by first pledging to take his leave of politics and then contradicting himself to take the defence portfolio. His own Labour Party supporters heckled him as a "zigzagger" during a speech in Tel Aviv yesterday.
Party rivals are suggesting privately he needs psychiatric help, and are publicly pressing to deny him the right to appoint the Labour ministers in the Likud-Labour coalition now being constructed; instead, they want the party's central committee to vote on the appointments.
And the front-page admission by columnist Sever Plotzker, in the top-selling Yediot Ahronot tabloid, that "I am embarrassed to have voted for Barak" was one of the milder press comments directed at him yesterday.
Perhaps the most cutting criticism came from another columnist, Nahum Barnea, who observed that Mr Sharon's government, which many be sworn into office next week, now seemed set to boast a defence minister, Mr Barak, who had been booted out as prime minister because of his defence policies, and a foreign minister, Mr Shimon Peres, who has championed a peace process of which most voters have now despaired. "The result is a crippled government, almost clownlike," wrote Mr Barnea.