United Nation helicopters circle in the cloudless sky above South Lebanon. The bumpy road below them is dotted with Lebanese army checkpoints.
Past them lies what is known here as the land of resistance – the villages where the Shia militant group Hezbollah controls hearts and minds.
From here, its fighters battled Israel in a fierce conflict in 2006 and now the portraits of Hezbollah fighters killed in that war look down from the roadside billboards.
Some look straight at Israel, which stretches just a couple of hundred of yards away beyond the …

The war against Hamas is taking place not only in the Gaza Strip, but in the West Bank as well, Palestinians said on Thursday.
Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority security forces, they noted, had stepped up their crackdown on Hamas supporters and figures in the West Bank since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead.
The latest anti-Hamas measures in the West Bank, which are being carried out in coordination with the IDF and under the supervision of US security experts, are designed to foil any attempt by the movement to overthrow the PA.

AMMAN (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm on Wednesday over reports of Lebanese rocket attacks against Israel and urged all parties in the region to avoid actions that could make a bad situation worse.
“That is … a very alarming, very disturbing and troubling situation,” Ban told reporters in the Jordanian capital on the first day of a week-long tour of the Middle East.
Ban said that U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, were investigating the rocket attacks launched from inside Lebanon. The incident took place on the 19th …

Rockets fired from Lebanon struck Israel on Wednesday for the second time in a week while its Gaza offensive ground on, but there was no immediate sign the incident would escalate into wider violence.
There was no initial claim of responsibility for the attack, which triggered warning sirens in parts of northern Israel, and police said no one was hurt.
On Thursday, a similar salvo hit northern Israel but Lebanese and Israeli officials were quick to play down that incident, blaming not the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement, an ally of Gaza’s Hamas, but …

In July 2006, Israeli troops were two weeks into their unsuccessful campaign to rescue captured soldier Gilad Shalit when the Shia Muslim political and militant movement attacked from the north.
Its fighters launched dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortars at Israel and seized two more soldiers and killed eight others in cross-border raids.
It was seen as a dramatic gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians, but Israel’s response was far more dramatic and devastating to Lebanon.

JERUSALEM — Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza threatened to broaden on Thursday as at least three rockets were fired into the north of Israel from Lebanon.
The rockets, presumably launched in support of Hamas, could presage the opening of a second front. The Israeli Army, in a brief statement, said it “responded with fire against the source of the rockets,” which landed near the town of Nahariya. Two Israelis were slightly wounded, the police said.

Hassan Nasrallah, is the current and third Secretary General of the Lebanese Islamist party and paramilitary organization Hezbollah.

As Israel continues its air offensive against Hamas in the Gaza strip, one unsettling specter has emerged from the recent past: the failed campaign to crush the Lebanese militants of Hizballah in July 2006. Lebanon was clearly on the minds of Israel’s military planners. Even as Hamas targets were pounded in Gaza, Israeli jets flew low level saber-rattling sorties over southern Lebanon, a warning to militants not to launch reprisal attacks along Israel’s volatile northern border.
For now, the Shi’ite Hizballah appears to be confining its protests to fiery rhetoric …

The head of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said Sunday that he had asked his fighters to be on alert for any possible Israeli attack on Lebanon following raids on Gaza that killed nearly 300 Palestinians.
In a televised address at a religious gathering marking the Shiite Day of Ashura south of Beirut, Nasrallah said “I have asked the brothers in the resistance in the south specifically to be present, on alert and cautious because we are facing a criminal enemy and we don’t know the magnitude of the conspiracies.”
“What …

Israel on Monday bombed the Islamic University and a government compound in Gaza City, key centers of Hamas power, in the third day of its aerial assault on the . Witnesses saw fire and smoke at the university, counting six separate airstrikes there just after midnight.
Other targets were a guest palace used by the Hamas government and the house next to Gaza Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s home in a refugee camp adjacent to Gaza City. He was not home, as Hamas leaders have gone into hiding.
In the southern town of …