The ongoing Middle East conflict opened on a second front yesterday, with the killing of an Israeli soldier several hundred yards inside Israel's border with Lebanon.
Israel, which pulled its troops out of Lebanon six months ago to comply with UN resolutions, lodged a formal protest with the UN after the attack - a roadside bombing for which Hizbullah claimed responsibility. A spokesman for Hizbullah described the incident as an attack in "northern Palestine".
In an immediate response Israeli jets and tanks bombarded several Hizbullah positions just across the border in south Lebanon, for the first time in the six months since they pulled back. Lebanese sources reported one person injured.
Israeli military sources acknowledged that numerous Hizbullah positions along the border had not been targeted, and asserted that the Israeli response had been deliberately "low key" because, they said, Israel is anxious not to enter a protracted and deep confrontation on the Lebanese front, particularly when the violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is continuing.
By the escalated standards of the past few days, Israeli-Palestinian clashes yesterday were relatively mild. Gunfire was exchanged at hotspots in Gaza and the West Bank, with Ramallah and Hebron among the main focal points, and there were long shooting battles after nightfall on the southern edge of Jerusalem, with Israeli tanks on the outskirts of the Gilo neighbourhood firing towards gunfire in Beit Jallah, a Palestinian-controlled town a short distance away. There were no reports of fatalities.
On Saturday afternoon, by contrast, four Palestinians were killed.
Almost two months into this confrontation, a variety of diplomatic efforts to broker a solution are again gathering pace - albeit with absolutely no guarantee of success.
An American-led fact-finding mission into the violence is getting under way, and Israel's Foreign Minister, Mr Shlomo BenAmi, flies to Moscow today, to see if there is any mileage in the proposals sketched out by President Vladimir Putin to President Yasser Arafat last Friday.
"We've been getting very clear (Palestinian) signals," said Mr Ben-Ami, "of a desire to end the violence." Mr Arafat, meanwhile, has been holding talks with both Jordan's King Abdullah, and Israel's Tourism Minister, Mr Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. And King Abdullah, in turn, also met Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak yesterday, as did Mr Danny Yatom, a senior aide to Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
AFP adds:
Several Palestinian militants belonging to the Fatah movement were killed yesterday in an ambush by Israeli troops near the West Bank village of Habla, an Israeli military source said.
The source said a preliminary report indicated four Palestinians had been killed in an Israeli commando operation activated when the group left a Palestinian-controlled zone in the northwest of the West Bank.
Residents in Habla said Israeli soldiers had grabbed the bodies before they could be identified.