Israeli arrested after crossing into Lebanon

The Lebanese army on Wednesday arrested a 34-year-old Israeli citizen who jumped the fence into Lebanon.

Simon Sa’adati was interrogated by the Lebanese army, who said he spoke only Hebrew, according to media reports from Lebanon.

The army was in contact with UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which monitors the border between the two countries, to try to get more information about the detainee. The Foreign Ministry in Beirut announced that the Lebanese army would return the intruder to Israel within a few hours.

However, Channel 2 later reported that Lebanon said it could take several days before he is returned.

Sa’adati reportedly has a history of disappearing. His mother told Channel 10 News that he’s done similar things before. He is also suspected of having a history of mental illness.

Hezbollah media painted Sa’adati as a spy who was aware of his actions rather than an individual who is mentally ill — and demanded a chance to interrogate him as well.

In March 2012, an Israeli Arab man, Ahmed Jamal Daif, who drifted into Lebanese water, was returned to Israel after being held in Lebanese custody for approximately six months.

It was unclear whether Daif, who worked as a chef at a restaurant in Netanya, was accidentally carried by the tide or whether he purposely swam past the maritime border. He was found in a diving suit at the southern Lebanese border town of Naqoura.

In 2004, an Israeli businessman, Elhanan Tennenbaum, was released in a prisoner exchange after three years in Hezbollah captivity. He was lured in and kidnapped by Hezbollah in Dubai after conducting business dealings with the group, including the smuggling of drugs into Israel, for which he was set to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, UNIFIL officers have become increasingly frustrated with Hezbollah in recent months, according to Lebanon’s Daily Star.

According to UN Security Council Resolution 1701, passed at the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the Lebanese army is tasked with controlling the country’s southern border region with the help of UNIFIL peacekeepers. However, a drawdown in the number of Lebanese troops along its southern border – the army’s force has dwindled to an estimated 3,000 soldiers — led to a rise in standoffs between UNFIL and suspected Hezbollah members, the paper reported Wednesday. UNIFIL claimed that paths in southern Lebanon were blocked and that observation points were made off-limits to them by the militant Shi’ite group.

Southern Lebanon has historically been a stronghold for Hezbollah.