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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060728/...lebanon_israel

Israel won't expand offensive in Lebanon

By RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press Writer

14 minutes ago

JERUSALEM - Israel's government decided Thursday not to expand its battle with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon for now, but authorized the army to call up 30,000 reserve soldiers in case the fighting intensifies. Lebanese officials estimated a civilian death toll as high as 600.

On Friday, Tony Blair's spokesman said the British prime minister will seek a U.N. Security Council resolution to resolve the fighting in the Mideast by early next week, his spokesman said Friday.

Blair will attempt to "increase the urgency" of diplomacy to end the violence between Israel and Hezbollah when he meets President Bush in Washington on Friday, his spokesman told reporters on board Blair's plane. He spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, Israeli aircraft hit 130 targets in Lebanon on Thursday and early Friday, including a Hezbollah base in the Bekaa Valley, where long-range rockets were stored, defense forces said. Other targets included 57 Hezbollah structures, six missile launching sites and six communication facilities.

Israeli jets also fired missiles at a building near the southern market town of Nabatiyeh on Friday, officials said. A man in a nearby house was killed by missile shrapnel.

With Hezbollah allies Iran and Syria reportedly meeting in Damascus to discuss the crisis, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was "willing and ready" to return to the region to work for a sustainable peace agreement.

Israel radio and the Haaretz newspaper reported Friday that Rice will fly to Israel on Saturday night to discuss the Mideast crisis. Haaretz said she plans to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday. Israel's foreign ministry declined to comment on the reports. The press attache at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv was not immediately available.

President Bush suggested he would support the offensive for as long as it takes to cripple Hezbollah. He also sharply condemned Iran for its support of the Shiite Muslim militant group.

The call-up signaled that Israel was settling in for a much longer battle than had initially been expected, one that could grow far bloodier if Israel decides its air attacks and small-scale invasion into Lebanon are not working and sends in thousands of more ground forces.

With no end in sight after 16 days of intense fighting, al-Qaida's No. 2 man vowed to attack "everywhere" until Islam prevails.

In recent days, senior Israeli generals urged the government to authorize a broader ground campaign in southern Lebanon, which they said would help the thousands of troops already engaged in bloody battles there.

Israel's security Cabinet authorized the army to call up three additional reserve divisions to refresh the troops in Lebanon if they are needed, but rejected the generals' advice to expand the offensive.

However, Justice Minister Haim Ramon said the failure of world leaders to call for an immediate cease-fire at a summit in Rome gave Israel a green light to carry on with its campaign to crush Hezbollah — an assertion hotly rejected by European officials.

Wednesday's conference ended in disagreement, with most European leaders calling for an immediate cease-fire and the United States wanting to give Israel more time to neutralize Hezbollah.

"We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world .... to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah won't be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed," Ramon told Israel's Army Radio.

European leaders said Ramon was mistaken.

"I would say just the opposite — yesterday in Rome it was clear that everyone present wanted to see an end to the fighting as swiftly as possible," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Thursday struck roads and houses, many believed to be the deserted homes of Hezbollah activists, in the apple-growing region of Iqlim al-Tuffah. The strikes caused casualties, but fighting kept ambulances and civil defense crews from the areas, security officials and witnesses said.

Other strikes hit a Lebanese army base in the north, while artillery and warplanes pounded the area near the border, according to witnesses. However, the fierce ground battles that raged Wednesday for the border towns of Bint Jbail and nearby Maroun al-Ras appeared to have abated, with U.N. observers reporting only "sporadic fighting" there.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said the strategic damage to Hezbollah was "enormous" and said the group would "not return to what it was."

Israel launched its offensive in Lebanon on July 12, after Hezbollah guerrillas overran the border, killed three Israeli soldiers on patrol and captured two others.

Since then, up to 600 civilians in Lebanon have been killed in a punishing campaign of airstrikes, artillery shelling and clashes. Lebanese Health Minister Jawad Khalifeh told The Associated Press on Thursday that 382 were confirmed dead and the rest either known to be buried under the rubble of buildings or missing.

The civilian deaths, combined with casualty figures released by the Lebanese army and Hezbollah guerrillas, bring the confirmed death toll on the Lebanese side to at least 437 killed.

Fifty-two Israelis have been killed in 16 days of fighting, including 33 soldiers and 19 civilians who died in Hezbollah rocket attacks into northern Israel. The guerrillas shot 110 rockets into Israel on Thursday, wounding 20 people and bringing the total of rockets launched to 1,564.

The army broadcast a warning on its Arabic-language radio station Thursday telling Lebanese in the south that their villages would be "totally destroyed" if rockets were fired from them.

Army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said there have been hundreds of Hezbollah casualties and that "we have caused serious damage to their rocket-launching capabilities."

But Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a staunch supporter of Hezbollah, said Israel would never be able to crush the group militarily, and should stop fighting and start talking.

"Whatever it (Israel) does it's not going to reach its goal," he told The Associated Press. "They're not going to be able to take out the weaponry of Hezbollah. So all they're doing is massive destruction."

Meanwhile, al-Qaida issued its first response to the violence, threatening to retaliate with new attacks.

The videotape by Osama bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahri was an effort by the terror network to rally Islamic militants by exploiting Israel's two-pronged offensive — against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas-linked militants in Gaza.

"We cannot just watch these shells as they burn our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon and stand by idly, humiliated," al-Zawahri said, adding that "all the world is a battlefield open in front of us."

"The war with Israel does not depend on cease-fires. ... It is a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," he said. "We will attack everywhere."

In Damascus, Syrian and Iranian officials gathered to hold meetings on the crisis, according to Iranian and Kuwaiti news reports. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah was also to take part in the meeting along with Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to Kuwait's Al-Siyassah newspaper, known for its opposition to the Syrian regime.

The newspaper said the meeting was designed to discuss ways to maintain supplies to Hezbollah with "Iranian arms flowing through Syrian territories."

Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Rahhal would not comment on whether Nasrallah, whose movements are kept secret, was in Damascus. However, Rahhal was dismissive of the Kuwaiti newspaper report.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, speaking in Rome after meeting with Italian Premier Romano Prodi, said intense negotiations were under way to free an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas-linked militants. However, a Palestinian lawmaker and a spokesman for the Hamas military denied that the soldier's release could be imminent.

With cease-fire efforts stalemated, Rice — who was in Malaysia after a trip to Beirut, Jerusalem and the Rome conference — said she was prepared to make a second tour of the Middle East. No timetable was announced.

"I am more than happy to go back," Rice said, if her efforts can "move toward a sustainable cease-fire that would end the violence."

In his interview with Army Radio, Ramon, the justice minister, said the Israeli air force must bomb villages before ground forces enter, suggesting that this would help prevent Israeli casualties. Ramon spoke a day after nine soldiers were killed in house-to-house fighting. Hezbollah acknowledged Thursday that it lost five fighters in the same clashes, though Israel said at least 30 were killed.

Asked whether entire villages should be flattened, he said: "These places are not villages. They are military bases in which Hezbollah people are hiding and from which they are operating."

Thousands of civilians are believed trapped in southern Lebanon, according to humanitarian officials.

International Red Cross spokesman Hisham Hassan said their teams that have visited border villages under heavy bombardment have found families hiding in schools, mosques and churches, or huddled together in homes they hope will withstand the barrage.

"But even the residents we speak to can't say how many are there, because everyone's hiding, they don't know who's dead or alive," he said.

___

AP correspondent Zeina Karam in Beirut, Lebanon contributed to this report.

__________________
To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

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Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/wo...html?th&emc=th

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: July 28, 2006
DAMASCUS, Syria, July 27 — At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.

The Middle EastNow, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.

The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.

An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a “new Middle East” that they say has led only to violence and repression.

Even Al Qaeda, run by violent Sunni Muslim extremists normally hostile to all Shiites, has gotten into the act, with its deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, releasing a taped message saying that through its fighting in Iraq, his organization was also trying to liberate Palestine.

Mouin Rabbani, a senior Middle East analyst in Amman, Jordan, with the International Crisis Group, said, “The Arab-Israeli conflict remains the most potent issue in this part of the world.”

Distinctive changes in tone are audible throughout the Sunni world. This week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt emphasized his attempts to arrange a cease-fire to protect all sects in Lebanon, while the Jordanian king announced that his country was dispatching medical teams “for the victims of Israeli aggression.” Both countries have peace treaties with Israel.

The Saudi royal court has issued a dire warning that its 2002 peace plan — offering Israel full recognition by all Arab states in exchange for returning to the borders that predated the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — could well perish.

“If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance,” it said, “then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire.”

The Saudis were putting the West on notice that they would not exert pressure on anyone in the Arab world until Washington did something to halt the destruction of Lebanon, Saudi commentators said.

American officials say that while the Arab leaders need to take a harder line publicly for domestic political reasons, what matters more is what they tell the United States in private, which the Americans still see as a wink and a nod.

There are evident concerns among Arab governments that a victory for Hezbollah — and it has already achieved something of a victory by holding out this long — would further nourish the Islamist tide engulfing the region and challenge their authority. Hence their first priority is to cool simmering public opinion.

But perhaps not since President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt made his emotional outpourings about Arab unity in the 1960’s, before the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, has the public been so electrified by a confrontation with Israel, played out repeatedly on satellite television stations with horrific images from Lebanon of wounded children and distraught women fleeing their homes.

Egypt’s opposition press has had a field day comparing Sheik Nasrallah to Nasser, while demonstrators waved pictures of both.

An editorial in the weekly Al Dustur by Ibrahim Issa, who faces a lengthy jail sentence for his previous criticism of President Mubarak, compared current Arab leaders to the medieval princes who let the Crusaders chip away at Muslim lands until they controlled them all.

After attending an intellectual rally in Cairo for Lebanon, the Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm wrote a column describing how he had watched a companion buy 20 posters of Sheik Nasrallah.

“People are praying for him as they walk in the street, because we were made to feel oppressed, weak and handicapped,” Mr. Negm said in an interview. “I asked the man who sweeps the street under my building what he thought, and he said: ‘Uncle Ahmed, he has awakened the dead man inside me! May God make him triumphant!’ ”

In Lebanon, Rasha Salti, a freelance writer, summarized the sense that Sheik Nasrallah differed from other Arab leaders.

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Jul. 29, 2006 1:25 | Updated Jul. 29, 2006 1:29
Cabinet rejects call to expand war
By YAAKOV KATZ, HERB KEINON AND ANSHEL PFEFFER

Despite approving the call-up of three reserve divisions, the security cabinet decided on Thursday against significantly widening the IDF's operations in southern Lebanon, rejecting a recommendation by Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz to escalate the offensive against Hizbullah.

Halutz, IDF officials said, asked the cabinet for permission to expand Israel's ground operations in southern Lebanon, to insert larger forces to sweep through the Hizbullah strongholds in the area. According to a high-ranking source in the Northern Command, Hizbullah has several hundred underground bunkers in southern Lebanon, mostly near the border with Israel.

Hizbullah fired at least 75 Katyushas at towns and villages throughout the Galilee on Thursday, lightly wounding two people in Kiryat Shmona.

As a result of the cabinet decision, the IDF said the operation in Lebanon, now called "the war within the straits" would retain its current format, according to which brigade and battalion-level forces - not division-level as Halutz had requested - carry out pinpoint incursions on specific targets. The IDF stressed that if Bint Jbail - where eight Golani soldiers were killed on Wednesday - did fall into Israeli hands, the victory could have a ripple effect on other Hizbullah strongholds and cause them to surrender.

Halutz said the IDF would now immediately call up the senior commanders of three reserve divisions. The soldiers, he said, would only be mobilized when the need arose. "We need to be ready for every scenario," Halutz said during a joint press conference with Defense Minister Amir Peretz. "This is the IDF's duty and the government has allowed us to fulfill it [by calling up reservists]."
"We did not say there would be a change in the nature of the operations, or a widening of the activity, but that we would be prepared for any situation that would necessitate larger forces," Peretz said.

The security cabinet approved the reserves call-up by an 11-1 vote, with Culture and Sport Minister Ophir Paz -Pines casting the lone negative vote. He acted out of concern that the decision would lead to a large-scale ground operation, which he opposes.

Senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office denied reports that the cabinet had slammed the brakes on widening the IDF's operation. This was supported by comments Halutz made at Thursday evening's press conference, in which he realigned his position with Peretz.

"We did not request approval for a ground operation today, so the cabinet did not approve a ground operation," he said. "We asked for the right to prepare the reserves for a time when we might need them, and we got that from the government."

Despite the call-up vote, Peretz told both the press conference and the cabinet that Israel had no intention of broadening the war to include Syria. Concerns were raised in the security cabinet that approval of a call-up would be interpreted by Syria as an indication that Israel was indeed going to widen its operations.

The special session of the security cabinet followed a five-hour meeting of Prime Minister's Olmert's inner cabinet - the so-called Forum of Seven - late Wednesday night.

According to officials in the Prime Minister's Office, five military options were discussed in the Forum of Seven. Widening the ground offensive was one of the options, but not the one preferred by the IDF.

At the press conference Thursday, Peretz deflected criticism of the army's conduct of the was made by Industry and Trade Minister Eli Yishai and Justice Minister Haim Ramon. The two ministers said there should have been more use of air power to soften up targets before ground forces were sent in.

Peretz said that no one was holding the army back, and that the military professionals were making the operational decisions, without intervention from the political echelon. He said that the critics should demonstrate "a little bit of restraint."

Following Thursday's meeting, the cabinet issued a statement saying that it decided on "the continuation of intensive combat against Hizbullah, including striking at its infrastructures and command centers, its professional capabilities, its war materiel infrastructure and its leaders, with the goal of returning the abducted soldiers to Israel and halting the firing of missiles at Israeli communities and targets, and to remove this threat."

The panel decided that military operations would continue in accordance with previous security cabinet decisions, another indication that the IDF did not intend to widen the operation. The statement said that any change in the "character of the activity" would be submitted to the full cabinet for approval. This followed criticism from a number of cabinet ministers that the decision to send ground troops into Lebanon was made without their knowledge.

Peretz said that the goal of the IDF's operations in southern Lebanon was to create a "special security zone" where a Hizbullah presence would not be tolerated.

"We will not allow a Hizbullah flag to fly along the Israeli border once again," he said. "Our goal is to create a Hizbullah-free zone for the crisis to come to an end... This security zone will provide protection for northern Israel."
Referring to the fierce battle Golani Battalion 51 fought on Wednesday in Bint Jbail, Halutz said the IDF had succeeded in "extracting a heavy price" from Hizbullah. "Dozens of terrorists were killed and have been left in the field," he said.

Meanwhile Thursday, the IAF pounded roads and suspected Hizbullah residences in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as a Lebanese army base in the north, while artillery shells pounded the border region as ground fighting continued.

The IDF's call for greater firepower came after Israel suffered its heaviest casualty toll of the current campaign in a single battle, with nine soldiers killed and 25 wounded in house-to-house fighting on Wednesday in and near Bint Jbail, known as the Hizbullah's "terror capital" in southern Lebanon.
Also Thursday, IAF fighter jets bombed the marketplace in Bint Jbail as well as roads and houses, many believed to belong to Hizbullah guerrillas.
The fighting has taken its toll on tank crews, some of whom have been in continuous action for the last two weeks. On roads near the border, the Armored Corps has set up sites where tank crews can drive up, replenish their ammunition and supplies, and refresh themselves before returning to Lebanon.

"It's not simple fighting the war while at the same time taking care of all the logistics," said Maj. Avi, deputy commander of Battalion 51, which operates the new Merkava 4 tanks, "but we're dealing with it."

The biggest problem the tank crews have come up against in this conflict is the large number of anti-tank missiles in Hizbullah's hands, which have hit a significant number of IDF tanks, though Avi insisted they were not surprised by this. The missiles come in a wide variety, not only the Russian-made RPGs and Saggers that the IDF has dealt with before, but also French-made Milan missiles. "You can buy anything with money" smiles Avi.

Another concern had to do with the tiredness of the forces, some of whom have been on the go for the last four and a half weeks, ever since Hamas captured Cpl. Gilad Shalit in Kerem Shalom, and have fought on two fronts.
"I'm especially worried about traffic accidents due to the soldiers fatigue," said an adjutant of one of the tank battalions. On our first night here, a tank knocked into a jeep that then ran over a soldier's leg. It could have been much worse." A significant part of the briefing given to Golani soldiers about to enter Lebanon on Wednesday night dealt with safety procedures when leaving their armored jeeps.

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UNIFIL: Hizbullah undefeatable militarily
A top UN peacekeeping official on Friday said he feared the war in southern Lebanon would continue until late August and voiced fears Israel would flatten Lebanon's southern villages and destroy Tyre "neighborhood by neighborhood" if Hizbullah rockets keep landing in the Jewish state.

At UN peacekeeping headquarters in Naqoura, barely a stone's throw from Israel, political affairs officer Ryszard Morczynski said Tyre would become a target of intense Israeli attacks because Hizbullah was firing rockets from the city's suburbs into Israel's northern port of Haifa.

..."I have no doubt that Israel will flatten Tyre if civilian casualties continue in Haifa. Tyre will be taken off neighborhood by neighborhood," Morczynski said. "I think Israel is contemplating flattening villages, flattening every single house to deny Hizbullah any advantage of urban fighting in the streets."

..."Hizbullah are still strong" 17 days into the conflict, peacekeeping chief, Maj. Gen. Alain Pellegrini told The Associated Press. Pellegrini told the Times newspaper that "a military victory will never be possible."

And according to Morczynski's calculation, roughly 800 Hizbullah fighters operate in the southern region on any given day.

"They are mobile, well-prepared, devoted and willing to act," he said. "When there is shelling ... they are not sitting in their bunkers."

The Hizbullah stronghold of Bint Jbeil attests to the group's tenacity.

"In Bint Jbeil it looks like the Israelis have pulled out and are now preparing the ground to come in again," Morczynski said, after Hizbullah fighters had pushed the limited Israeli ground force to the southern edges of the town.

...Also, he said, there was evidence Hizbullah's communications were intact and their fire-and-run tactics were still effective. There was no sign that the guerrillas' supply of rockets was dwindling and Israel has had limited success in targeting their launchers.

Morczynski said the peacekeepers occasionally intercept Hizbullah communications. He recalled a typical such exchange: "Allah is great. My brothers this is number 13 and we are going to operation number 7. We hope that our brothers are safe for the day." Hizbullah uses numbers and letters as codes to identify the fighter and the location.

Hizbullah firepower would seem to be a combination of sophisticated missiles and the older Katyusha rockets, Morczynski said. Some rockets are launched from the back of trucks, while older ones are ferried on motorcycles and fired from portable triangular-shaped launchers.

"They have thousands of them. They are scattered everywhere - in caves, houses, bushes, abandoned buildings. They aren't all in one, two or three depots that you can hit and say now we have wiped them out," he said adding Israel wanted to clear Hizbullah from a two-kilometer strip along its northern border.

"The only way to prevent the launch of rockets is to erase all launching positions of Hizbullah. That is the only solution," Pellegrini said. "But it is difficult."

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http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a..._ccc=1&cid=842


Israel Rejects Call for Cease-Fire

By KATHY GANNON, AP

(July 29) -- Israel on Saturday rejected a U.N. request for a three-day cease-fire to get in supplies and allow civilians to leave the war zone.

Israeli troops pulled back from a Lebanese border town Saturday after a weeklong battle with Hezbollah, the bloodiest ground fighting of the 18-day Israeli offensive.

Elsewhere, Israeli warplanes blasted bridges and demolished houses, killing seven people, including a woman and her five children.

The battle for Bint Jbail has symbolized Israel's difficulty in pushing guerrillas back from the border, whether by air bombardment or ground assault. Hezbollah on Friday escalated its cross-border attacks, firing longer-range missiles deeper into Israel than ever before.

Lebanese civilians have born the brunt of the Israeli onslaught. The woman and her children were crushed in their home by a strike outside the market town of Nabatiyeh, which also killed a man in a nearby house, Lebanese security officials said. In another southern town, six bodies were dug from the rubble of a house destroyed by a strike Friday, they said.

With warfare in its 18th day, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returned to the Middle East to give Lebanese and Israeli leaders a refined U.S. package of proposals aimed at ending the violence.

Washington's proposals appeared to try to take into account some elements from a new peace plan put forward late Thursday by the Lebanese government.

"The most important thing that this does for the process is that it shows a Lebanese government that is functioning as a Lebanese government," Rice told reporters during a refueling stop in Qatar. "That is in and of itself extremely important."

Rice plans to meet first with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem for talks on Saturday night, said Mark Regev, spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry. There was no immediate word on a stop in Beirut, but Rice's visit to Lebanon earlier in the week was announced at the last minute for security reasons.

The U.S. peace plan calls for an international agreement on a U.N.-mandated multinational force to stabilize the region, according to a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.

It proposes: disarming Hezbollah and integrating the guerrilla force into the Lebanese army; Hezbollah's return of Israeli prisoners; and a buffer zone in southern Lebanon to put Hezbollah rockets out of range of Israel. It also seeks to address some demands from Lebanon: a commitment to resolve the status of a piece of land held by Israel and claimed by Lebanon; and the creation of an international reconstruction plan for Lebanon.

The United States is under increasing pressure to quickly find a way to end fighting that has killed hundreds, driven some 750,000 Lebanese from their homes and caused a humanitarian crisis. Israel's offensive - launched after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 raid - has become an all-out attempt to end the guerrillas' domination of south Lebanon.

Hezbollah on Thursday for the first time signed on to a Lebanese government peace plan calling for an international force in the south and the eventually disarming of the guerrillas. The plan falls short of Israeli and U.S. demands, however, and there was skepticism Hezbollah would fully agree to an international force.

Israeli Cabinet minister Avi Dichter said Saturday that it was unacceptable for Lebanon's government "to hide behind the claim that a terror organization is operating on their ground and they cannot stop it." He told Israeli radio that Israel holds the government fully accountable for what Hezbollah is doing there, and that "Lebanon is paying the full price these days."

More humanitarian aid arrived Saturday by sea and by air, but was piling up in Beirut. Aid convoys fear Israeli bombardment, so only a trickle has reached the war zone in south Lebanon where tens of thousands of people are stranded with dwindling supplies of medicine, food, water.

Israeli strikes have come within hundreds of yards of the aid convoys making their way south this week, though no trucks have been hit so far - said officials from the international Red Cross, U.N. and other agencies.

Israel has promised safe passage for aid but on a convoy-by-convoy basis; 72-hour notice often is required, slowing the process considerably, the officials said.

Israel on Saturday rejected a U.N. request for a three-day cease-fire to get in supplies and allow civilians to leave the war zone.

Avi Pazner, an Israeli government spokesman, blamed Hezbollah guerrillas for blocking convoys, saying fighters were preventing the transfer of medical aid and of food ... to create a humanitarian crisis, which they want to blame Israel for," he said.

The top U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Lebanon, Mona Hammam, said convoys so far had encountered "no problems" from Hezbollah.

Earlier Saturday, bombardment by Israeli forces and rocket fire from guerrillas was intense around the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbail, Lebanese security officials said.

On Friday, the Israeli army said seven of its soldiers were wounded, including one seriously, when Hezbollah attacked a ridge overlooking Bint Jbail and the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras.

Israeli troops launched their assault on Bint Jbail on July 23, entering houses inside the town in heavy fighting. The military suffered its worst losses of the entire campaign Wednesday, with nine soldiers killed in ground fighting in and around the strategic town.

Taking Bint Jbail - the largest town near the border - would be a strong blow to Hezbollah, depriving it of a key stronghold and forcing it to find shelter in more vulnerable villages in the area. The mainly Shiite town is significant for Hezbollah: It is nicknamed "the capital of the resistance" for its vehement support for the Shiite guerrillas during the 1982-2000 Israeli occupation of the south.

At least 445 Lebanese have been killed in the fighting, most of them civilians. Some estimates range as high as 600 dead, with many bodies still buried in rubble.

Thirty-three Israeli soldiers have died in fighting, and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 19 civilians, the Israeli army said. Israeli troops have killed about 200 Hezbollah guerrillas, the army said. Hezbollah has reported only 35 losses.

The United States, backed by Britain, has adopted a diplomatic stance not embraced by most allies, insisting that any cease-fire must come with conditions to address long-standing regional disputes.

Many Europeans and Arab countries are increasing the pressure for an immediate cease-fire first. There is general agreement an international force is needed in the south to end Hezbollah's decade-long free reign there. Details about the force and its mandate are not resolved, but could be at the U.N. on Monday during a meeting called by President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair after a White House meeting Friday.

In the Arab world, the fighting has raised a groundswell of support for Hezbollah, which many Arab governments initially criticized for provoking the conflict.

In remarks published Saturday, Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa - one of the country's most influential religious leaders - described Hezbollah strikes on Israel as "defense of its country and not terrorism."

Egyptian cleric Sheik Youssef el-Qaradawi, a prominent Sunni religious scholar, issued an edict describing Hezbollah Shiites as "part of the Islamic nation" and saying support for the guerrillas was "a religious duty of every Muslim."

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744332.html

Last update - 00:14 31/07/2006


Peretz: Fighting in Lebanon to continue at least two weeks

By Yuval Azoulay, Yoav Stern and Amos Harel, Haaretz Staff and Agencies

Hours after an Israel Air Force strike killed at least 54 people in the southern Lebanese town of Qana, Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Sunday that Israel would continue its military assault on Hezbollah targets for at least two more weeks.

The Israel Defense Forces convened a press conference Sunday evening, admitting that while the IAF did indeed strike the building in which the civilians were killed, the attack itself occurred near midnight, while reports of an explosion and the structure's collapse were only received at around 8:30 A.M.

The air force did resume bombing Qana at 7:30 A.M., however the strikes were carried out on targets at a distance of 460 meters from the building.

"The question we don't have an answer to is what happened between 12 midnight and 8 in the morning," said IAF Brigadier General Amir Eshel.

Lebanese villagers in Qana who were witness to the bombing, however, say that the building's collapse occurred in the wee hours of the night.

Witnesses at the scene corroborated the IDF claim that the strike on the building, which is located in the Hariva neighborhood of Qana, was carried out at 1:00 A.M. After the initial strike, some of the building's residents exited in an attempt to survey the damage, in effect saving themselves.

A few minutes later, IAF planes struck the building once again, causing the walls to collapse on the residents who did not vacate, killing them in the process.

Arab media began reporting on the incident after dawn Sunday, approximately seven hours after the strike. The reports did not note, however, that the building collapsed a short time prior to Arab journalists' arrival on the scene.

IDF Head of Operations Directorate Major General Gadi Eizenkot said the Qana incident "will not loosen our grip," adding that aerial strikes intended to harm Hezbollah's capability of launching rockets into northern Israel will continue.

Maj. Gen. Eizenkot noted that Hezbollah operatives fired a total of 150 rockets into Israel, some of which struck Haifa. Eshel pointed out that rocket fire into Haifa has waned in the last few days.

"This is tied to our operations," Eshel said.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday expressed "deep regret" for the Israeli air strike that cost scores of life in the south Lebanese village of Qana, but said Israel would not declare a cease-fire until it had reached the targets it had set at the beginning of the war.

Olmert, responding to harsh international criticism on the strike, said that Hezbollah had used Qana as a base for launching hundreds of rockets at Israel.

"From the village and its surroundings, hundreds of Katyusha [rockets] have been fired at Israel, toward Kiryat Shmona and Afula," Olmert said during a cabinet meeting, according to a participant.

In Israeli media accounts, Olmert was further quoted as saying that "All the residents [of Qana] were warned and told to leave. No one was ordered to fire on civilians and we have no policy of killing innocent people."

Qana was the scene of an April, 1996, in which Israeli shelling of a base of United Nations peacekeepers in Qana killed more than 100 civilians sheltering there during Operation Grapes of Wrath.

The international outcry over the 1996 Qana village shelling effectively ended the operation. It was also said to be a factor in the subsequent election defeat of then-prime minister Shimon Peres, whose support among Israeli Arabs was sapped by the Qana deaths.

The Lebanese Red Cross officials in Beirut said Sunday that more than 54 people were killed in the air strike, including 27 children.

Peretz has ordered an investigation of the incident.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday "This horrific massacre will not go without a response."

Some 40 targets were hit in IAF strikes overnight across Lebanon. Among the targets were buildings used by Hezbollah, rocket launchers and bridges.

IDF renews ground offensive
The IDF renewed its ground offensive in south Lebanon on Sunday morning. A Nahal division, backed by armored troops, began operating in southern Lebanon, heading toward the village of Taibeh.

The Lebanese army on Sunday opened fire on IAF helicopters attempting to land near a town in the Bekaa valley, preventing them from setting down, Lebanese security sources and witnesses said.

The four helicopters appeared to be trying to land Israel Defense Forces soldiers near the town of Yammouni, they said.

The helicopters flew away before IAF warplanes launched air raids on the area, the sources said.

Seven IDF soldiers were wounded on Sunday in three separate incidents in the Taibeh area in the eastern district of southern Lebanon.

Two of the soldiers were moderately wounded and three suffered light wounds. One of the moderately wounded soldiers was hit on how way to Taibeh, in Kafr al-Adaisa. The IDF is probing the possibility that he was hit bu friendly fire.

At least three Hezbollah fighters were killed in al-Adaisa on Sunday. IDF soldiers also discovered in the village a hidden cache of weapons, including guns, a rocket launcher, and IDF uniforms.

According to the IDF, Hezbollah guerillas have used the village over the last few days as a base to fire rocket at Israel.

Also Sunday, IDF troops clashed with Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, north of Dovev. Hezbollah fighters sustained injuries in the clashes.

astralis

it seems like israel is in the worst of both worlds: not enough force to significantly ruin hezbollah, but so much force as to raise the ire of the populace further.

and all the guerilla needs to do is survive to achieve victory...which means that the political standing of hezbollah will go up.

Bluesman

Given the news of today...your point remains unproven.

__________________
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory."
- George Orwell

dalem

I read an interesting article today (don't have the link handy but it was probably via Powerline) that made the case for Hezbollah being in a situation resembling that of the Japanese on Iwo Jima: backs against the wall and nowhere to go but to one's ancestors.

The author pointed out that Hizb/Iran/Syria has apparently trained a nice little semi-pro army, stocked it with weapons, and placed it in a well-mined, well-tunneled, and well-sited area suitable for hobbling and hurting the rear elements of a deeply-advancing IDF and causing them many boo-boos.

The problem for the Bad Guys is that the Good Guys have chosen to not advance very deeply, and have instead stopped to kill the Bad Guys a whole lot.

I found that perspective and interpretation very compelling, and I certainly hope it's more accurate than not.

-dale

troung

August 01, 2006 17 07

Israeli forces are well into their main ground offensive into Lebanon. It is difficult to hide a strategic offensive of this size, but Israel has made no attempt to hide this one at all. The three-week air offensive, followed by the pseudo cease-fire and disagreements in the Israeli Cabinet on strategy, made it necessary for Israel literally to announce its offensive. Ultimately, this gave Hezbollah little advantage. It might have wanted to halt fighting at this point, but it certainly knew that for precisely this reason Israel would have to intensify the fighting. There might be elements of tactical surprise, but strategic surprise is gone.

Click here.....
IDF OPERATION CHANGE OF DIRECTION - MAP

Hezbollah is now fighting the war it wanted and prepared for. Its forces are well-dispersed and dug into bunkers. Supplies for extended combat have undoubtedly been distributed in these strongholds so they require no re-supply. Certainly the Israelis will do everything they can to prevent it. Command has clearly devolved to the lowest possible unit, so contact with central headquarters is not necessary for fighting. Hezbollah is not going to be engaged in maneuver. It will fight where it stands.

As we have said before, the strategy looks more like the way the Japanese defended Pacific islands against the U.S. Marines during World War II than anything else. Hezbollah fighters are defending in depth from interlocking strong points. They have constructed these strong points in order to survive artillery and airstrikes. They are forcing the Israelis to close with the strong points and take them in close combat. The Japanese did not necessarily expect to survive the battles. Their goal was to inflict disproportionate casualties on the attacking troops in order to force reconsideration of the strategy of island-hopping and set the stage for a political settlement. The Japanese failed because they underestimated the U.S. capacity for absorbing casualties and the size of the force available. But the strategy, while ineffective, was based on a real confidence that their own forces would be willing to engage in battles of annihilation when it was their own annihilation that was certain, and when their mission was to delay and impose casualties on the enemy.

There are many differences here, but Hezbollah's core strategy appears to be the same. Its deployment has enormous value if its forces are prepared to fight to the end, imposing time penalties and casualties on Israel. If its strong points can hold out for extended periods of time, some of them firing missiles at Israel, then the Israelis have no option but to close and engage in intense sequential firefights that will take time and cost lives. If it can fight a battle of annihilation yet delay and hurt the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Hezbollah might well force a political settlement. If not, it can still gain a political victory by being the first Arab force to force Israel into high attrition combat.

Therefore, Israel's strategy must be twofold. First, it must end the war with the catastrophic destruction of Hezbollah's military capability. It could survive as a political force, but its military strength, and therefore its coercive presence in Lebanon, must be ended. Second, Israel must do this in a time frame and at a cost in casualties that does not allow Hezbollah to claim victory regardless of the consequences to its own forces. Third, it must carry out this operation before U.S. political interests in the region (pressure from allies in Iraq, the Saudis and so forth) force the United States to compel Israel to agree to a genuine cease-fire, as opposed to the pseudo cease-fire engineered by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that actually bought Israel more time.

In other words, Hezbollah's strategy is to force Israel to fight a war that takes as long as possible, using Israeli time urgency to force Israel to move rapidly against strong points incurring maximum casualties. Israel's strategy is to use its greater mobility and firepower to break Hezbollah as quickly as possible with minimum casualties. The issue is how well-prepared Hezbollah's defenses actually are and how well-motivated its troops are after a three-week bombing campaign. How long can Hezbollah maintain its tempo of operations on a tactical level?

Israel's strength is in its firepower and its mobility. Its mobility has value primarily when fighting against a force with a substantial logistical tail. Cutting nonexistent supply lines against a force that has its supplies organically attached to it does not allow encirclement to take place. This limits the utility of dynamic mobile operations in most senses. There is one sense, however, that allows this to go on.

One of Israel's strategic goals, apart from crushing Hezbollah, is eliminating Hezbollah's ability to fire rockets and missiles into Israel, and particularly to Haifa and points south. It is difficult to know precisely the range of Hezbollah's rockets and missiles and how many they have, but it is clear that simply attacking Lebanon south of the Litani River will not solve that problem. To guarantee an end to rocket attacks, we estimate Israel will have to push Hezbollah back to Riyaq to end the threat from Zelzal-2 rockets, to Baalbek to protect Tel Aviv, and to Hermel to protect Haifa. To protect against the Fajr-5, Israel will have to push as deep as 10 miles north of the Litani along the coast. It is possible to bomb launchers and storage sites, and Israel can hit what it knows about, but the problem is it cannot have certain knowledge of what it knows unless it goes in on the ground. Intelligence is never as good as going and seeing.

Click here........
MAXIMUM HEZBOLLAH ROCKET RANGE - MAP

his means if Israel wants to destroy all of Hezbollah's military force and destroy existing threats from rockets, it will have to do more than attack Lebanon south of the Litani. It will have to go deep into the Bekaa Valley and it will have to go north of the Litani along the coast. Logic has it that Israel would therefore attempt to encircle south Lebanon along the Litani and move into the Bekaa Valley and north along the coast to isolate Hezbollah from support before dealing with intense fighting in southern Lebanon. This poses obvious logistical problems, since two armored thrusts would have to be supported by relatively few roads leading out of the Israeli panhandle in the north; Israel would want to capture roads in southeastern Lebanon near Metulla in preparation for such a thrust.

It appears (and this is from far away) that is what Israel is doing. Israeli troops are engaged in four separate locations across southern Lebanon, and have reportedly pushed as deep as several miles past the Lebanese border. IDF units remain in Maroun al-Ras, although the town of Bent Jbail has reportedly been devastated and abandoned. Paratroopers are in Aita el-Shaab to the west, where Hezbollah has said there is house-to-house fighting; four Hezbollah fighters were reportedly killed. The Golani and Nahal brigades continue to battle Hezbollah in the villages of Al Adisa, Kfar Kila and Taibe, with reports of fighting as far north as Marjayoun. Approximately 60 IDF D9 armored Caterpillar bulldozers are flattening abandoned Hezbollah positions across southern Lebanon. An Israeli airstrike targeted a westbound road out of Hermel with five air-to-surface missiles in the northern Bekaa Valley. The main border crossing from Beirut to Damascus at Masnaa was also struck.

These are fragmentary reports available by wire services. They are far from defining what is happening on the ground. But what seems to be happening is the IDF is engaging forces in the south carefully while action is taking place in the east and west. The remaining strategic question is whether Israel will focus on southern Lebanon and leave the missile threat and a large part of Hezbollah forces out of its plans, or whether it will drive into the Bekaa and up the coast to deal with Hezbollah in detail. It would seem to us that this would give Israel the maximum advantage, dealing with Hezbollah more completely, taking advantage of its greater mobility and air power and using artillery and airstrikes to grind down Hezbollah and attempt to break its morale in the south. What is unknown, of course, is the disposition and capabilities of Hezbollah north of the Litani and in the Bekaa. We suspect the Israelis might find the same resistance in the Bekaa as in the border region.

In the long run, the correlation of forces dictates Israeli victory. But there are other variables. Time and casualties could turn a military success into a political defeat for Israel. Moreover, if the outcome of the attack is that Israel is forced to occupy Lebanese territory for an extended period of time, then the cost of counterinsurgency operations mount. Israel's strategy is clear. Move in fast, deal a catastrophic blow to Hezbollah, withdraw leaving the Lebanese army or a European peacekeeping force in its place. Hezbollah has drawn Israel in. It expects a catastrophic blow but its intention is to impose tremendous costs on Israel and then create a situation in which peacekeeping forces will not deploy, forcing Israel into a counterinsurgency.

So, the questions now are whether Israel moves north of the Litani, how long Hezbollah will resist and what the cost will be to Israel. Gen. Dan Halutz, chief of staff of the IDF and architect of that air campaign, was hospitalized for the third time July 31, complaining of stomach pains. Should Halutz go out of commission, his deputy, Moshe Kaplinsky, will take command. Kaplinsky is drawn from army, having commanded the Golani Brigade, with long experience in Lebanon. This brings expertise on ground warfare to the top spot in the IDF, particularly in combined infantry-armored operations in Lebanon. Israel has focused down on the main battle now. Hezbollah has been focused for a while. As the cliche goes, the outcome is in doubt, in large part because like all wars, the end of this one is political -- and the intersection of the political with the military complicates the war enormously.

http://www.stratfor.com/products/pre....php?id=271162

Parihaka

One might even say disproved.

astralis

there's a good reason why i wrote at the time,

it seems like israel is in the worst of both worlds

troung

Source: New York Times

August 2, 2006
The Overview
Israel Expands Ground Forces Inside Lebanon

By CRAIG S. SMITH and STEVEN ERLANGER

MISGAV AM, Israel, Wednesday, Aug. 2 — Israel sent up to 7,000 troops into Lebanon on Tuesday, a significant increase in a ground offensive aimed at pushing the Hezbollah militia back from the border before a cease-fire is declared and a multinational force deployed.

The troops, backed by air support, tanks and armored bulldozers, entered at four places along the border, moving up to 4.5 miles inside to engage Hezbollah fighters and destroy their outposts and structures.

The Lebanese media reported that at least one helicopt