BEIRUT, July 21 (AFP) - The Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah proved this week it remains a painful thorn in Israel's side, still capable of deadly cross-border attacks and helping the Palestinian uprising against the Jewish state.
Southern Lebanon woke up Wednesday to Israeli shelling after two days of fighting and attacks that killed two Israeli soldiers and two militiamen from Hezbollah, the "Party of God."
The violence, which drew calls for restraint from the United States, prompted threats from Israel against Hezbollah and its backers -- Lebanon and its powerful neighbor Syria and the Shiite Islamic republic of Iran.
In turn, Lebanon accused Israel of engaging in hostile acts that violated the UN-drawn Blue Line demarcating their volatile border and said it was considering calling on the UN Security Council to act.
"There is a real risk of escalation and regional destabilisation" if the situation remains unchecked, a foreign diplomat in Beirut warned.
"Risk increases every time there is a change in the rules of the game," with operations outside the limits of the disputed Shebaa Farms border area, he said. "And this is what happened yesterday."
In response to Monday's killing of one of its leading military commanders in a daring Beirut car bomb blast blamed on Israel, Hezbollah struck Israeli border troops outside the Shebaa area the next day, killing two.
Hezbollah suffered one casualty in retaliatory action by Israel that also saw its war planes break the sound barrier over Beirut.
Major General Benny Ganz, Israel's army commander for northern Israel, threatened to direct a "painful strike" against Hezbollah's backer Syria.
He described Hezbollah as a "powderkeg" and also accused it of being involved in Palestinian operations in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Hezbollah led a guerrilla war that was instrumental in leading to Israel's May 2000 troop pullout from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation, with spectacular guerrilla attacks including suicide bombings.
The group has vowed to continue "resistance" attacks until Israel evacuates the Shebaa Farms, captured by Israel from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war but claimed by Lebanon with the consent of Damascus.
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Monday to "cut the hand" of Israel after blaming it for the killing of Ghaleb Awwali, a senior commander of the movement's military arm who was working on ways to provide assistance to the Palestinian intifada.
"Although Israel remains pre-occupied with its volatile frontier with Lebanon, it has paid greater attention lately to Hezbollah's alleged activities in the Palestinian territories," noted The Daily Star newspaper.
Walid Sharara, a Middle East affairs researcher and an expert on Hezbollah, said that in the last few years, "Israel has been clearly focused on parties aiding the Palestinians with the ultimate objective of ending the intifada."
He highlighted what he said were Israeli assassinations of militants and the seizure of arms shipments to the Palestinians allegedly from Hezbollah.
"Israel is benefitting from the inter-Palestinian clashes and wants to further isolate the intifada, together with the US pressures on Arab states to stop funding Palestinian factions leading the intifada."
Hezbollah, originally formed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, repeatedly also pledged to continue the fight until the "liberation" of all occupied Arab lands, including Jerusalem.
The group is known to have thousands of active militants, a tightly-knit security apparatus and remains an important player in Lebanese politics, with 12 members of parliaments. It is practically the only militia that was not dissolved after the end of the 1975-1990 civil war.
Hezbollah is also a major provider of social, educational and health services to thousands of Shiites in traditionally impoverished areas, mainly in Beirut's southern suburbs and in the south and the east of the country.