An exceptional shooting incident was reported Oct. 5 on the Israeli-Lebanese border, resulting in an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) patrol wounding a Lebanese soldier. The incident does not, however, conform to earlier analysis by the senior officer in Israel's Northern Command who briefed military affairs correspondents Sept. 14. He warned against a possible clash in which Hezbollah would temporarily take control of significant portions of the Galilee and talked about a war that seems further away than ever.
Current conditions in the region could enable Israel to take steps that would postpone such a flare-up to a distant date, if ever. The officer reiterated the main motif running through Israel’s deterrence strategy of the past eight years in regard to Hezbollah: In any future war, the IDF will cause tremendous damage to the organization and to Lebanon. IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz put it this way Oct. 3: ''We will take Lebanon and knock it back 70 or 80 years.''
