Special report: Israel-Lebanon Conflicts   [ Video ][Gallery] 

    JERUSALEM, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Israel Air Forces warplanes have not stopped violating Lebanese air space since Israeli ground troops completed withdrawal from southern Lebanon in early October.

    Irritated by Israeli fighters' ongoing operations, Major General Alain Pellegrini of France, commander of UN Interim Forcein Lebanon (UNIFIL) warned last week that the UN troops might need to change the rules of engagement to allow the use of anti-aircraft missiles against Israeli jets.

    Meanwhile, French President Jacques Chirac also accused Israel's flights over Lebanon of violating UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 34-day fighting between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas on Aug. 14.

    However, in response to the French condemnation, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz told the Cabinet in Jerusalem Sunday that "the accumulating intelligence in our hands points to arising effort to transfer arms" to Hezbollah.

    Paris might choose to turn a blind eye, but for Israel, "the legitimacy for over flights increases," Peretz said. In fact, Israel has more excuses for rationalizing its air presence beyond the northern border with Lebanon.

    According to Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were still being held captive, in direct opposition to the UN resolution.

    The international arms embargo on Hezbollah was not fully in place, and "unfortunately there are still illicit arms transfers," Regev said.

    The spokesman added that the resolution called for the removal of all Hezbollah armed personnel south of the Litani River, something that had not yet been achieved.

    A source of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, based in East Jerusalem, told Xinhua that Hezbollah militants concealed their armed activities by wearing civilian clothes and refraining from carrying unconcealed weapons.

    As a result, it was quite difficult for the UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army to search for such activities, the source added. Another issue which IDF officials concern is whether the Lebanese Army, made up of four divisions totaling 8,000 soldiers, is fully organized in the area.

    Israeli officials said they passed on to Lebanon information about dozens of suspicious locations, some of them deep in Lebanon. However, the Lebanese Army reported that it had checked them without having discovered anything significant.

    The Lebanese troops said sometimes it was hard to patrol some of the suspicious sites due to the fear of detonating Israeli explosives that were left behind during the month-long Israel-Hezbollah conflict.