More than two years after Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon sparked a deadly 34-day war with Israel, Lebanon is launching a new battle against Israel.

Only this time it's over food.

Lebanese food makers claim that Israel is stealing traditional Arabic dishes such as hummus and tabbouleh and claiming that they are Israeli.

"It's not enough that they are stealing our land," Fadi Abboud, head of the Lebanese Industrialist Association, told the Associated Press. "They are also stealing our civilization and our cuisine."

Abboud says he is preparing for a landmark food fight that would officially register the foods in question as Lebanese, thus preventing Israel from marketing the products as hummus, tabbouleh, baba ganouch, etc.

It might sound improbable, but Abboud cited the so-called "feta cheese precedent" in which a European court deemed feta cheese to be uniquely Greek, a move that blocked France, Denmark and other nations from marketing their cheese as feta.

(Similar disputes have been fought over Champagne, for example, with longstanding laws that prevent places outside the fabled French region from marketing sparkling wine as Champagne.)

Israeli officials so far have declined to comment on the new battle brewing in the north...