Mid-east war spreads to Israel-Lebanon border

Mid-east war spreads to Israel-Lebanon border
REUTERS

JERUSALEM, NOV 26: Lesbanese guerrillas attacked Israeli troops at the border today, reopening the northern front while Israel tried in Egypt to renew peace efforts with the Palestinians shattered by two months of bloodshed.

Syrian-backed Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon claimed responsibility for a roadside bomb that wounded three Israeli soldiers at the Shebaa farms area at the border.

Israeli warplanes retaliated with a rare cross-border attack but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said yesterday that fighting was the only way to regain the Shebaa farms which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.

Backed also by Iran, Hizbollah fought a war of attrition until Israeli forces pulled out from South Lebanon in May, ending a 22-year occupation.

Middle East diplomacy shifted meanwhile to Egypt where President Hosni Mubarak and a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met to explore ways of ending bloodshed in the West Bank and Gaza strip.

The Israeli official, Danny Yatom, flew to Cairo less than a week after Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, recalled its ambassador to Tel Aviv and accused the Jewish state of aggression towards Palestinians.

Israeli political sources said an Israeli cabinet minister and a former Israeli spymaster met Palestinian President Yasser Arafat secretly in the Gaza Strip on Saturday night, but a senior Palestinian official denied a meeting took place.

The Israeli sources said Minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, a former army chief, and Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin bet intelligence service known for his contacts with Palestinian officials, met arafat at Barak's behest.

In Cairo yesterday, Arafat briefed Mubarak on talks he had on Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Palestinians want a bigger peace role for Moscow to counterbalance that of Washington, Israel's closest ally.

Arafat told Jordan television he hoped the flurry of diplomacy would go some way towards ending the violence that has cost 274 lives, most of them Palestinians, and left middle east peacemaking in tatters.

``I hope the diplomatic efforts and the Arab and international initiatives will attain positive results in stopping the aggression on the Palestinian people,'' he said.

But as he spoke the death toll was rising. The Israeli army killed four Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank yesterday, hospital sources said, despite a deal between the sides to restore some security cooperation.

It was unclear whether Israel would lift its blockade of Palestinian cities ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan beginning on Monday. An Israeli government source had said it might be lifted if violence stopped.

A senior Palestinian security official said Israel had closed the Allenby bridge crossing between the West Bank and Jordan because Palestinians had rejected an Israeli demand to body-search Palestinian workers.

Hizbollah, the Shi'ite Muslim ``Party of god'', claimed the attack on the Israelis in apparent solidarity with the Palestinians waging what they have called the ``Al-aqsa intifada'' against Israeli occupation.