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Beirut (AP) – Israeli military planes flew several low-flying flights over Beirut, while reconnaissance drones buzzed overhead on Sunday, making it a daily occurrence.
Israel regularly violates Lebanese airspace, often to strike in neighboring Syria. On Christmas Eve, Israeli planes flew late into the night, terrorizing Beirut residents who are no strangers to such flights. They were followed by Israeli strikes reported in Syria.
The frequency of low-flying warplanes over the capital has intensified in the past two weeks, making residents agitated as tensions rise in the region in the last days of President Donald Trump’s administration.
“When the drone leaves, the warplanes come. When the warplanes leave, the drones return. They saw us in our PCs, filmed us in our PCs and supervised us in our PCs. Now, what “, joked the Twitter user Areej_AAH.
“Of all the types of panic I’ve experienced in life in Beirut, the panic that accompanies Israeli warplanes flying so low in Beirut is very special,” wrote Tweet Rudeynah Baalbaky, who said she had memories of the 2006 war with Israel.
Israel rarely comments on these reports.
Many fear that the conflict could erupt in the area before Trump leaves the mandate in retaliation for the US assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq last year or to abandon the efforts of the future Joe Biden administration to negotiate with Iran.
On Friday, the Lebanese army recorded an Israeli flight that lasted almost six hours in the south of the country.
A Twitter account that follows the movement of planes from the Middle East, Intel_Sky, has recorded dozens of Israeli planes flying over Lebanon, including raid simulations, since the beginning of the year. Intel_Sky called Sunday’s flights “simulated raids.”
At one point this summer, the Lebanese army said that Israel violated its airspace almost 30 times in two days, dropping reconnaissance drones and planes on Lebanese territory.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon says Israel is entering Lebanese airspace on a daily basis, violating UN resolutions and the country’s sovereignty.
Between June and October 2020, UNIFIL recorded a daily average of 12.63 airspace violations, totaling 61 hours and 51 minutes during the flight, a significant increase over the last four months. Drones accounted for about 95 percent of violations, UNIFIL said.
Technically, Israel and Lebanon are at war. Hezbollah, a strong Lebanese militant group backed by Iran, is a sworn enemy of Israel and the two have had a number of clashes, including a large-scale war in 2006.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in an end-of-year interview that Israel’s efforts to reduce its group’s ability to purchase precision-guided missiles had failed. He boasted that Hezbollah now has twice as many missiles as last year.
Israel has expressed concern in recent months that Hezbollah is trying to set up production facilities to make precision-guided missiles.