BORDER CASUALTY: Private Seán Rooney was killed while serving the UN Interim Forces in Lebanon

Last December, while en route to Beirut Airport, his small convoy came under attack from Hezbollah gunmen. Just one member of the militant group – Mohammad Ayad – was subsequently detained and charged with Pte Rooney's murder.

Recently the court made the surprising decision to release Ayad on bail. Given the timing of the ruling – the de facto border is more violent than it's been since the war of 2006 – many believe Hezbollah used its influence over the court to send a message: don't send your troops to Lebanon.

Thin blue line
Blue lines don't come much thinner than the one separating Lebanon from Israel. Around 10,500 peacekeepers supported by 41 countries patrol the 120km land division as well as 200km of coastline: the only naval peacekeeping force in the UN's history.

The supposed "interim" period of UNIFIL's deployment has lasted since Israel's withdrawal in 1978 and has claimed the lives of 325 Blue Helmets.

Although the mission is permitted to use force in self-defence and to protect civilians, it resorts more often to the telephone, calling either side to ask if they would kindly stop shooting.

UNIFIL prefers a peaceful life: it provides local training programmes in computer skills, languages, and agriculture; last year, a South Korean battalion hosted free taekwondo classes.

Hezbollah's rise
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has grown to become one of the most powerful non-state actors in the Middle East, while in recent years Lebanon's central government has grown ever weaker.

Hezbollah, which has two ministers in the caretaker government, controls swathes of the south and the suburbs of Beirut, and has direct influence over the country's ports and airports, not to mention its courts.

And now it is conducting a tit-for-tat border conflict with the Israeli Defence Forces. Since 8 October, the two sides have been exchanging daily fire that has claimed the lives of more than 100 people and forced tens of thousands on both sides of the divide to flee their homes.

As usual, UNIFIL is in the crossfire, and has been hit multiple times by rockets and mortars fired by both sides.

Mission creep
The rest of the country has been left to worry about the war moving north. Most Lebanese remember when similar border clashes in 2006 led to the bombing of Beirut's suburbs; some remember the two-month Siege of Beirut in 1982.

It wasn't until November that Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, finally announced he would speak after the first Friday prayers of the month. In the capital people stocked up on tinned food, amid speculation that the bespectacled cleric might broadcast a full-scale war from his secret hideout.

In the end, though, his 90-minute monologue was a damp squib: just a fireside chat for Hezbollah's supporters. He droned on, promising that his forces had no intention of backing down while pointedly giving no indication that they would escalate the fighting. We breathed a collective sigh of relief.

True to his word, the shooting on the border has not abated, but nor has it significantly increased. For Israel the war would be a huge distraction, for the US it would be a disaster, and for Hezbollah the stakes could be existential.

Barring major miscalculation, we may have dodged another major war. Nevertheless, for the time being, the Blue Helmets will be wise to keep their heads down for the foreseeable.

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