Deliberate provocation cycles drove Israeli escalation in South Lebanon

Evidence

Fisk did not reverse the principle that guerrillas resisting occupation were justified in doing so, nor did he succumb to the temptation to consider the battle of South Lebanon as one between the West and terrorist Muslims, backed by Iran. Thus he was convincingly able to show in his description of the Qana incident that there was a deliberate Israeli policy since the 1993 cease-fire of initiating twenty incidents as a way of drawing out Hizbollah, and thereby “retaliating” with great force so as to put pressure on Lebanon and Syria. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 61