The Daily Star reported yesterday that there was a major explosion on the Israel-Lebanon border in which four IDF soldiers were wounded. After the Lebanese army investigated, it reported that a likely Israeli patrol had crossed the border for an unspecified purpose and caused the explosion. The article speculated that the incident might’ve resulted from either an Israeli landmine planted by the IDF along the border; or from a Hezbollah IED designed to foil precisely such unwanted “visits.” Daily Star notes that the Lebanese militia has discovered a number of similar Israeli attempts to tap into its communications lines.
The article further notes a disagreement on the position of the Israeli patrol when the mishap occurred. The Lebanese army said it was 400 meters inside the border. Another source said it was only a few meters inside the border.
An Israeli confidential source allows me to clarify much of what occurred: a combined unit of Israeli special forces (Sayeret Matkal) and Egoz (a commando reconnaissance unit) infiltrated Lebanon in order to plant “listening devices.” They’d only managed to penetrate a few hundred meters into the country when they set off a landmine, which injured four members. The mission was aborted and the unit retreated.
The Star notes that the IDF planted an extensive mine field to frustrate Hezbollah penetration into Israel. It would seem highly unlikely an IDF patrol would’ve been unable to avoid its own landmines. Therefore, it’s much more likely a Hezbollah munition exploded. If so, this represents yet another failed IDF mission to monitor Hezbollah and stay one step ahead of it in the espionage race.
Over the past year or more, Lebanon exposed a series of espionage rings operated by Israel. Earlier this summer, Hezbollah hijacked the navigation system of an advanced Israeli drone, which was scuttled before it fell into enemy hands, as a U.S. drone did inside Iran. Another intelligence failure was Israel’s attack on an Assad missile depot in Latakia. Though Israel did destroy a warehouse, much of the targeted munitions had been moved. The mission had been compromised by a mole within the ranks of Israel’s FSA ally.
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The pictures in this article are old. from 2011.
Egoz is not a reconnaissance unit, whoever wrote that simply copied it from wikipedia without understanding that this is simply a translation of the Hebrew term סייירת – Sayeret.
From wiki -” Egoz specializes in guerrilla, anti-guerrilla warfare, and more complicated ground activity. Egoz is part of the Northern Command’s Golani Brigade and today, it is a “Portable” unit, that operates anywhere.:
As for Egoz working together with Sayeret Matkal – no chance this will happen. Egoz is not a service provider such as other special forces units within the IDF.
@Miki:
False. I never claimed the first picture is contemporaneous. It’s meant to demonstrate past Israeli operations which did what this current operation was trying to do. As for the 2nd photo, according to Daily Star it IS current. Here is the full caption. If you dispute this I’d like to see proof:
If you don’t have proof to support your claim above, we can similarly doubt some or all of the rest of your claims in yr comment.
@ Richard
” I never claimed the first picture is contemporaneous”
So why don’t you add in the caption picture is not from current border incident ?
Because I never claimed it was and what you’re demanding isn’t generally the way pictures are captioned. From my post, it’s clear the IDF unit didn’t succeed in installing any equipment since it was waylaid before that happened. So based on the picture showing a lot of Israeli surveillance equipment on Lebanese soil, it should be clear that it wasn’t from this incident. As I wrote, my intent was to show the sort of equipment the IDF generally attempts to infiltrate into Lebanon. It was not to show the equipment it attempted to infiltrate on this particular mission.
Why did you falsely claim the 2nd picture was bogus without offering proof? That shows either sloppiness or bad faith on your part. Which was it?
@ Richard
Strange, i wrote a response which evaporated into the web’s darkspace.
Anyhow It was a typo i meant to say the 1st picture. But there is something very strange with the 2nd picture.
if you will use google images you can see that the picture was first aired on Aug 7th on a site named toraradical and only on Aug 8th it was reported by the Lebanese Daily Star.
Richard wrote: ” it does appear there may be more misses than hits.” This conclusion appears to demonstrate a bit of a bias no? I mean how would you know the ratio of hits to misses? You know some of the misses but none of the hits. You should check with your ubiquitously present Israeli source to try and determine a semi-authoritative ratio. THAT would be interesting. Is Israeli intelligence completely falling apart? Have operations expanded and so too the incidence of failure? Or what?
Richard. This extremely pro (and connected to) HA editor of al_Ahkbar claims that HA set up an ambush of the IDF troops.
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/lowdown-hezbollah’s-ambush-south-lebanon
@lally: Very possible. But if it was an ambush I would’ve thought Hezbollah would’ve used fighters on the ground & attacked using gunfire in addition to an IED.
Lebanon-Israel Border Incident Tests UNIFIL-Hezbollah Ties
Photos by Ali Hashisho were taken on August 7, 2013. Hashisho is a well known photographer/journalist for New TV in Saida Lebanon and Reuters.
Thank you.
UNIFIL on the reported incident near Labouneh during the night of 6-7 August
The presence of Israeli soldiers in Lebanon in violation of the Blue Line constitutes a serious breach of the terms of UN Security Council resolution 1701. UNIFIL has strongly protested the violation to the IDF and called for its full cooperation with UNIFIL’s investigations into the incident.
Hostage taking incident of two Turkish pilots near Beirut airport
Turkish Government has decided to withdraw the Turkish Engineering Construction Company (TURKCOY) of UNIFIL by the first week of September 2013.