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IT SOUNDED like a news item from a sleepy suburb: Tree-Pruning Ends In Tragedy. The clash along the tense Israeli-Lebanese border on August 3rd, which left two Lebanese soldiers, a Lebanese journalist and an Israeli officer dead, did look rather like a backyard spat. At the spot where it happened, Israel’s security fence runs, unhelpfully, not along the legal frontier, but some 60 metres inside the Jewish state, leaving a no-man’s-land gap. Lebanese soldiers, spotting an Israeli maintenance crew using a cherry-picker to reach over the fence, may have assumed this was a border intrusion. They say they fired warning shots over the heads of the crew. To the Israelis they were plainly sniper rounds, one of which struck and killed a lieutenant colonel, standing in an observation post 200 metres away. Israel responded with artillery and rockets. UN peacekeepers quickly intervened to soothe tempers. The UN later said the tree was indeed on the Israeli side of the border.

The tragedy could have been much worse. Israel and Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shia party-cum-militia, fought a full-blown war here four summers ago. Despite the withdrawal of Hizbullah fighters and their replacement by ill-equipped Lebanese army conscripts, and despite the presence of a beefed-up 12,000-strong UN peacekeeping force, tension has been rising. The inconclusive war of 2006, which started when Hizbullah fighters attacked a similar Israeli patrol, has left the Israeli army itching to smash the... >>>