BEIRUT – Hizbullah on Wednesday, Feb. 26, confirmed an Israeli air raid two days earlier on one of its positions in Lebanon and vowed to respond “at the appropriate time” to the “blatant aggression”.

“On Monday night… the Israeli enemy’s warplanes bombarded a Hizbullah position on the Lebanese-Syrian border, near the area of Janta in the Bekaa Valley” in eastern Lebanon, said a statement by the Lebanese party.

The movement’s statement was the group’s first admission it had been targeted in the raid, although Lebanese sources had previously confirmed the attack.

“This new attack amounts to blatant aggression against Lebanon, its sovereignty and territory,” the armed movement said, adding that “it will not stand without a response from the Resistance, which will choose the appropriate time, place and means”.

On Tuesday, Israeli officials refrained from commenting specifically on Monday night’s raid, although they confirmed a policy of interdiction of suspected arms deliveries from Syria to Hizbullah.

Hizbullah added in its statement: “This aggression did not, thank God, cause any deaths or injuries. There was only some material damage.”

However, several Lebanese media outlets reported that four Hizbullah fighters dies in the attack.

It also said it was untrue that the target had been “artillery positions or missiles.”

On Monday night, a Lebanese security source said two raids had hit a Hizbullah target at the Lebanese-Syrian border.

According to Ibrahim Al-Amin, the editor-in-chief of Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, the purpose of the Israeli airstrike might have been to provoke retaliation from Hizbullah “in order to determine how much its involvement in Syria and its security alertness in Lebanon has impacted its readiness on the Israeli front.”

“Hizbullah Secretary General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah has already warned in a recent speech that the Resistance’s alertness against Israel is not related to any other battles,” wrote Al-Amin. “What Nasrallah refrained from saying in public, he said in meetings with Hezbollah’s military and security officials, urging them to work as if they are fighting on three fronts: in Syria, in Lebanon, and against the enemy.”

Meanwhile, farmers and shepherds in the villages adjacent to Israel  activity on the other side of the border has been unusually quiet, with no sight of Israeli army patrols, an indication that the Jewish state might be fearing retaliatory action from Hizbullah.

“Everyone should understand that the resistance is ready, along with the Lebanese Army, to confront aggression and that we are all here too, as part of Hezbollah,” Mahmoud Rammal, a farmer from the border town of Wazzani told The Daily Star.

Khadija, who had brought her sick sheep to the field clinic, said she hadn’t seen Israeli patrols around the area recently. “We are at our best; it is them, the Israelis, who are scrambling. Their patrols have vanished and their settlers have stopped coming to their citrus orchards.”

Rammal said that no one on the Israeli side had come to tend to their citrus orchards or factories.

“The Israelis are living in fear and they have asked everyone to keep away from the border regions, which are within firing range of the Lebanese Army and the resistance. If any battle is waged with the Israeli enemy this time we will dance inside their settlements,” he said. “We want the new Cabinet to realize why we want the resistance to be mentioned in the policy statement.”.