Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes the closest he has ever been to his arch-foe Israel yesterday when he tours Lebanon's southern border region on the second day of a high-profile visit.
The hardline leader, who has questioned the Holocaust and described Israel as a "tumour," will stand some four kilometres (about two miles) from the Jewish state on the final leg of a controversial two-day visit to Lebanon that Washington has described as "provocative".
Israeli officials have slammed his visit as a sign Lebanon had "joined the axis of extremist states."
"It is a provocative and destabilising visit," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP in Jerusalem. "It appears his intentions are blatantly hostile and he is coming to play with fire."
Ahmadinejad's visit was "like a landlord visiting his domain," he added.
The Iranian leader has received a hero's welcome among supporters of Shiite militant Hezbollah who turned out en masse and showered him with rice and rose petals on his arrival Wednesday.
The visit has underscored Iran's reach in Lebanon through its proxy Hezbollah, the most powerful military and political force in the country.
However, the trip has drawn criticism from Lebanon's pro-Western parliamentary majority, who see it as an attempt to turn the country into "an Iranian base on the Mediterranean."
Thursday's tour includes a stop in Bint Jbeil, a village demolished by Israel during its 2006 war with Hezbollah.
He will also visit Qana, which has earned a grim place in history after being targeted by Israeli shelling that killed 105 civilians who had sought shelter in a UN base in 1996 during the Jewish state's "Grapes of Wrath" offensive on Lebanon.
The village was again the site of tragedy when a shelter collapsed on dozens of residents, including disabled children, during Israeli strikes at the height of the month-long 2006 war.