Israel Matzav

Trying to help you get your bearings

I've seen some comments that indicate that people are trying to get some idea where Tuesday's events took place. Let me give you some idea.

The picture at top left was from a lookout point at Misgav Am, just West of Metulla. I discussed it at length here. You will see the road that starts at the bottom right corner of this picture in the Channel 2 video I posted earlier on Tuesday. I believe the village you see in the background in the upper left and center of the picture is the village where the shots came from on Tuesday. In any event, the road winds around the side of the mountain and passes beneath that village. The IDF patrols it regularly.

Now, here's a map of the blue line:

If you follow the (dark) blue line from left to right, you will see that it goes almost straight across and then starts to dip down gradually. The village where the battle took place is apparently to the right of the line (the Lebanese side) right at the point where it starts to dip.

And here's a photo that the IDF posted of exactly where the incident took place.

I watched the Channel 2 report again. I was right. The IDF was operating from Misgav Am and the village in the picture at the top of this post is where the trouble was.

The IDF was on its road along the border. There's a strip - probably less than 100 meters wide - which is a buffer zone between the IDF's road and the international border. The Lebanese forces are supposed to stay on their side of the international border.

The IDF was removing vegetation from the strip - on its side of the international border - to prevent Hezbullah from using that vegetation for cover to pull off another kidnapping. They used vegetation like that as cover to kidnap Goldwasser and Regev in 2006.

Those who are interested may now want to go back and look at the Channel 2 video again and see if it makes more sense.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:54 PM