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The Lebanese military arrested on March 30 Syrian and Palestinian nationals suspected of being involved in recent rocket attacks on Israel, the Al-Hadath TV reported.
A security source told the Saudi-owned news channel that the Lebanese military will not tolerate any party attempting to violate the ceasefire with Israel, stressing that border patrols will continue around the clock. The unnamed source didn’t provide any further details.
Two salvos of rockets were fired from southern Lebanon at settlements in northern Israel on March 22 and 28 in violation of the ceasefire brokered by the United States last November.
Hezbollah denied responsibility for the attacks, which didn’t cause any losses. Still, Israel responded by launching strikes against targets belonging to the group, going as far as hitting the Lebanese capital, Beirut, after the second attack.
Speaking to Al-Mayadeen TV last week, a source from Hezbollah claimed that the recent rocket attacks from Lebanon were “a part of a suspicious attempt to fabricate pretexts for the continuation of the Israeli aggression on Lebanon.”
After the arrest of the suspects, Lebanese activists claimed that some of them were linked to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist group that toppled the regime of president Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria last December then took hold of the country.
HTS, which supposedly dissolved itself after the fall of the regime, has been a longtime rival of Hezbollah. Since assuming power in Syria, its forces engaged in several waves of border clashes with Lebanese Shiite tribes linked to the group.
The last confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah is thought to have played a key role in the fall of the Assad regime, as it weakened one of its key allies.
In fact, the offensive that saw the regime collapsing within eleven days began just a few hours after the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah entered into effect on November 27.
The collapse of the ceasefire in Lebanon could play in favor of the new Syrian government as it would further weaken Hezbollah. This would open the door for Syrian Islamists to expand their influence into Lebanon without facing much resistance.
However, if the Syrian government, which now represents HTS, was indeed behind the recent rocket attack, Israel could respond. Israel has already shown great suspicion towards Syria’s new Islamist rulers. It has also demonstrated its willingness to take military action against them by occupying a swath of southern Syria and launching hundreds of strikes across the country.
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