In the wee hours of Christmas morning, I received a text message from a Lebanese Palestinian friend in Beirut, sent from the hallway of his apartment. He had run there after being jolted from his sleep by the sound of Israeli jets - later reported to be Israeli jets and/or missiles en route to targets in Syria - and the sensation that something in the vicinity was about to explode.
Of course, Israeli breaches of Lebanese airspace are nothing new. Israel has long been notorious for violating not only Lebanon’s skies - and territory in general - but also Lebanese eardrums and mental and emotional wellbeing.
In his book Pity the Nation about the Lebanese civil war of 1975-90, late journalist Robert Fisk describes the terrific noise generated during an episode circa 1978 in which two Israeli jets “broke the sound barrier as they flew at low level over west Beirut, shattering the shop-front window panes on [the city’s iconic] Hamra Street with their sonic booms”.
And it’s been pretty much nonstop ruckus ever since. Granted, it’s not a subject that generates much media attention, but if one puts in a bit of time on Google, the issue does turn up. There’s a 2017 Reuters dispatch about the sonic booms that “broke windows and shook buildings” in the southern Lebanese city of Saida, while also causing “panic”.
Then there’s a 2007 Jerusalem Post writeup about sonic booms over Nabatiyeh and Marjayoun - the latter a majority-Christian city that formerly served as the headquarters of the South Lebanon Army, an Israeli proxy militia that tortured and terrorised with abandon during the two-decade Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon that ended in May of 2000.
And there’s a 1998 BBC headline: “Israeli planes create sonic boom confusion over Lebanon”, concerning mock raids staged by the Israeli Air Force over Beirut and environs.
To be sure, the relative media disinterest is not for a lack of information. Lebanon hardly hesitates to publicise flagrantly illegal violations of its airspace by its hostile southern neighbour, and has on various occasions filed complaints with the United Nations - most recently this month. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.