Lethal Border Clash Was Planned Ambush at Israeli Territory

Conclusive evidence shows that the Lebanese army staged a planned ambush on the IDF in Israeli territory and invited media to film the lethal attack on the IDF Tuesday.

 

 

 

“It was a planned ambush by a sniper unit," Maj. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot told reporters.
Tuesday morning started off with a routine communication by the IDF to United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) forces that the army planned to uproot several trees within Israeli territory in order to remove branches that were interfering with electronic detection devices.
The work was to begin at 9 a.m., but Israel accepted UNIFIL’s request to delay the action for two hours. In the meantime, UNIFIL informed the Lebanese army, which is standard operating procedure.
However, an officer in the army decided to exploit the situation, plan the ambush and even notify Lebanese media, which arrived near the scene to film the attack. Two or three shots were fired, one of them at the head of a senior IDF officer, who was killed, and the other in the chest of a junior officer, who is in serious but stable condition.
All parties—UNIFIL, the Lebanese army, local media and Hizbullah—knew of the ambush, except for Israel. The Lebanese Army claimed that the IDF drew fire by crossing the border, but UNIFIL has confirmed that the IDF was operating within Israeli territory. A UNIFIL officer also told Army Radio Wednesday, "I can confirm that we received notification from the IDF about the work and we passed the information on to the Lebanese Army.