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It took no more than cutting down a tree to shatter four years of calm on the Israel-Lebanon border.
Despite one of the quietest periods in decades along the Israel-Lebanon frontier, people on both sides of the border seem to fear that another eruption of violence is only a matter of time.
Israel exchanged a Hezbollah prisoner and the bodies of two Lebanese fighters for the corpse of a drowned Israeli civilian Monday night, a move that could pave the way for a trade involving two Israeli soldiers whose capture sparked their war last year.
Syria on Wednesday opposed deployment of an international force along its border to prevent arms shipments to Hezbollah, and Israel called the situation in Lebanon "explosive." A cease-fire was further shaken by artillery shells and explosions that killed three Lebanese soldiers and an Israeli.
Lebanon's government rejected a U.N. cease-fire plan backed by President Bush on Monday, demanding Israel immediately withdraw even before a peacekeeping force arrives and promising to send 15,000 troops to take control of the Hezbollah stronghold along the border.
Israel's pounding of Hezbollah positions across Lebanon expanded Friday with missiles targeting bridges in the Christian heartland north of Beirut for the first time, an attack that further isolates Lebanon from the outside world.
Israel launched its deepest ground strike into Lebanon on Wednesday, claiming it killed 10 Hezbollah guerrillas and captured five in the northeastern city of Baalbek, while nearby air raids killed at least 15 civilians.
An Israeli airstrike killed at least 56 people, including at least 34 children, in a southern Lebanese village Sunday, the Lebanese Red Cross said. It was the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting. Lebanese security officials put the toll at 57 dead. Security officials said the toll rose dramatically after 18 people from two families were found in a single room of the building, where dozens of people had been taking refuge from the fighting.
Hezbollah launched a new kind of rocket Friday that made the deepest strike into Israel yet, rattling Israelis as their warplanes and artillery targeted guerrillas in attacks on apartment buildings and roads.
Israel's government decided Thursday not to expand its battle with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon for now, but authorized the army to call up 30,000 reserve soldiers in case the fighting intensifies. Lebanese officials estimated a civilian death toll as high as 600.
Hezbollah inflicted heavy casualties on Israeli troops as they battled for a key hilltop town in southern Lebanon for a fourth day Wednesday, with at least 12 soldiers reported killed. Israel has faced fiercer resistance than expected as it advances across the border in its campaign against the Islamic militant group.
Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into the country in heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas on Monday, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise visit to Lebanon to launch diplomatic efforts aimed at ending 13 days of warfare.
Israeli troops met fierce resistance from Hezbollah guerrillas Thursday as they crossed into Lebanon to seek tunnels and weapons for a second straight day, and Israel hinted at a full-scale invasion. Israeli warplanes also launched new airstrikes on Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, shortly after daybreak.
A wave of Israeli warplanes blasted a bunker in south Beirut thought to hold Hezbollah's top leaders Wednesday, intensifying an offensive against the guerrillas despite mounting international pressure and an appeal from Lebanon to spare the country further death and devastation.
Westerners fled by land, sea and air Monday as Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon briefly and Hezbollah rockets knocked down a three-story house in northern Israel. However, there were signs of movement on the diplomatic front to end the worst fighting in 24 years.
Israeli ground troops have entered southern Lebanon to attack Hezbollah bases on the border, a government spokesman said Monday. Israel's six-day-old offensive against Hezbollah following the capture of two Israeli soldiers earlier had been an aerial campaign.
Israeli warplanes renewed attacks on Lebanon early Saturday, targeting bridges and fuel storage tanks and gas stations in the east and south, security officials said.
"Better a Thousand Israeli Invasions…""Better a thousand Israeli invasions than another civil war," is a refrain I heard more than once from Lebanese who detest the very existence of Hezbollah.
Watching American TV in BeirutWar in Lebanon has once again become breaking news on television screens across the world, but a growing body of distorted reporting is being disseminated just as rapidly as the country is being destroyed.
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