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Hezbollah Strike On Israel-Lebanon Border Amid Talks On Mideast Crisis
by Judi Rever
JERUSALEM (AFP) - A Hezbollah attack on Israel's border with Lebanon killed one Israeli soldier and wounded two others Sunday, stoking tensions in the area, while diplomatic moves were afoot to curtail two months of blood-soaked conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel launched retaliatory air strikes in southern Lebanon for the first time since its withdrawal from the region in May after the bomb exploded in the path of a military patrol near the disputed Shebaa Farms border area, a mountainous region on the Lebanese-Syrian borders occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
"The situation is very sensitive on the northern border, and can degenerate at any moment," Prime Minister Ehud Barak told public radio before briefing his cabinet on the incident.
"That is why we must respond with force and intelligence, and not let ourselves be drawn into adventures."
Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim movement that fought Israel's 22-year occupation of Lebanon, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the bombing was part of the jihad, or holy war, "to regain every inch of our occupied territory."
Israel said it had lodged a complaint with the United Nations against Lebanon over Hezbollah's activities against its forces in the area.
"We hope for support from the international community and for the Lebanese government to condemn this aggression against Israeli forces outside Lebanese territory," Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami told a news conference.
Lebanon also said it would complain to the United Nations over the Israeli shelling and air strikes, with President Emile Lahoud terming the Israeli retaliation "a dangerous precedent for which Israel alone will bear the consequences."
Last month, Hezbollah kidnapped three Israeli soldiers at Shebaa, an area captured from Syria in the 1967 war but now claimed by Lebanon, in a bid to secure a prisoner swap with Israel.
Meanwhile, in the Palestinian territories, there were fewer reports of unrest Sunday with no one reported killed, after more than eight weeks of bloodshed claiming the lives of 283 people, leaving Middle East peacemaking in shambles.
Ben Ami, who had been scheduled to head to Moscow Monday for talks with President Vladimir Putin, said: "It is our intention to change the trend of events. This cycle of violence where Palestinians perpetrate acts of terrorism or shoot and Israel responds will lead nowhere."
"We would like to create conditions for proceeding to more civilized contact between Israelis and Palestinians."
A foreign ministry spokesman said Ben Ami's trip to Russia, which has proposed new initiatives aimed at quelling the violence, was likely to be postponed because of a first reading Tuesday of a parliamentary bill by the right-wing Likud opposition calling for new elections.
The potential political crisis at home came amid converging diplomatic efforts to restore calm between Israel and the Palestinians.
Danny Yatom, Barak's top security advisor, delivered a message from the prime minister to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a meeting in Cairo on the crisis, which has damaged ties between Israel and its oldest peace partner.
Last week, Mubarak recalled Egypt's ambassador to Israel to protest at the Jewish state's "excessive use of force" against the Palestinians, only the second time Egypt has taken such action since the two signed a peace treaty in 1979.
Jordan's King Abdullah II, whose country is the only other Arab state to have made peace with the Jewish state, also held talks with Mubarak on Sunday.
But an Egyptian diplomatic source sounded a note of warning that such support was fragile.
The source said the two leaders discussed "mechanisms for following up and implementing the resolutions of October's Arab summit" which threatened to sever Arab ties with Israel.
On the ground, one Palestinian injured a week ago at the Karni crossing, between Israel and the Gaza Strip, died from his wounds, hospital officials said.
Four other Palestinians were injured, two of them seriously, on Sunday in renewed violence at Karni, while at Khan Yunis, 10 Palestinians, three of them children, were injured by Israeli shelling of the town.
Gunfights also erupted after dark between the Arab village of Beit Jala near Bethlehem and the nearby Jewish settlement of Gilo. Witnesses reported Israeli shelling and machine-gunfire on the village, leaving one person injured and two houses on fire.
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