Hezbollah announced the killing of six of its fighters in a raid Jan. 18 which it accused the Israeli air force of carrying out against a group of its members on Syrian territory. The incident has preoccupied the Lebanese political scene and was expected to resound in the coming days, for more than one reason.
Hezbollah's statement on the death of its fighters in the raid comes as the first official acknowledgment by the party of its involvement in the ongoing military confrontations in the far south of Syria, specifically in the area adjacent to the Syrian border with Israel. The official statement by Hezbollah’s media relations office confirmed that its members died in the town of Mazraat al-Amal, in the Syrian region of Quneitra.
Mazraat al-Amal witnessed fierce fighting between the Syrian and Israeli armies during the 1973 October war. Yet, it remained under Syrian sovereignty after the end of the war, with the presence of United Nations forces, namely the UN Disengagement Observer Force. It is worth mentioning that during the past period, suspicions prevailed that Hezbollah — the first Shiite organization in Lebanon and the region — had expanded its military presence on the Syrian territories, from the vicinity of Damascus and Homs all the way to the Israeli-Syrian border. This was accompanied by a series of incidents in this location, part of the Syria-Lebanon-Israel triangle. On March 14, 2014, an explosive device targeted Israeli soldiers in the occupied Shebaa Farms area adjacent to the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Another explosive device targeted Israeli soldiers in the depth of the Golan Heights area just four days after the first incident, on March 18.
The secretary-general of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, announced its party’s responsibility for the first attack within the occupied Lebanese territories, in a news interview on April 7. Moreover, on Oct. 7, Hezbollah announced that it detonated an explosive device against an Israeli tank in the Shebaa Farms area, considered by the Lebanese government as Lebanese territory occupied by Israel.
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