Several hurt in Gaza air strikes BBC News
Palestinian doctors in Gaza say several people have been hurt in fresh Israeli air strikes there, that took place as Israel's Lebanon offensive continues. Israel says it attacked buildings used by militants from Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees in Gaza City and the northern town of Beit Hanoun. Palestinian militants fired a rocket on Sderot in Israel, hurting one person. Meanwhile, the Palestinian president is heading to Kuwait as part of efforts to negotiate an end to the violence. More than 100 Palestinians have been killed, many of them civilians, in Israeli air strikes and incursions since Palestinian militants kidnapped a young Israeli soldier more than a month ago. Yet the intense attacks on Lebanon have overshadowed the continuing violence in the Gaza Strip, our correspondents say. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been having talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has been playing a key role in mediating between Israel and the Palestinians. Mr Abbas's visit to Egypt was the start of a regional tour that will take him to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. The BBC's Lucy Williamson, in Gaza, says Mr Abbas has been sounding very upbeat about the possibility of a negotiated ceasefire in Gaza.

'Timing tricky'
The sticking point all along has been how and when Palestinian militants will hand over captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, our correspondent says. Militant groups, including Hamas, have said any handover will need to be accompanied by the simultaneous release of Palestinian prisoners currently being held in Israeli jails. Israel has stuck to its demand that the soldier be released first. According to a key negotiator, who has been acting as a mediator between Mr Abbas and the militant leaders, the idea being floated now is that a third party - probably Egypt - will take charge of the soldier, while Israel keeps its side of the bargain. Even if this is accepted by militant groups, though, there is also a worry that the timing might prove tricky, our correspondent says. The violence is increasing on Israel's northern border. And many Palestinians are very supportive of Hezbollah's actions. Our correspondent says that while Hamas has stuck to its formal position that there is no linkage between the two conflicts, privately many in Gaza's political elite believe it could be difficult for them to agree to a deal with Israel while Hezbollah continues its fight in the north. On Sunday, Mr Abbas reportedly condemned the deadly Israeli raid on the Lebanese village of Qana as a "crime" and asked the UN to oversee an immediate ceasefire. Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was quoted by AFP as saying: "Abu Mazen has called the Lebanese president and prime minister and offered his deepest condolences [for] the victims of the crime that was committed by Israel in Qana which he condemned in the strongest possible terms and that he had asked the permanent members of the [UN] security council to provide for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon."

Israel to continue action in Lebanon despite Qana tragedy-Olmert ITAR-TASS
Israel will continue active offensive combat in Lebanon, despite the tragedy in the Lebanese Qana town where some 60 Lebanese citizens fell victim to Israeli missile attacks, Prime Minister of the Jewish State Ehud Olmert said at a meeting of the country’ s government held in Jerusalem. He said the Israeli side will not back out of its tasks, will not stop the offensive despite the emerged difficulties. Hezbollah, the same as other terrorist organisations, is threatening the entire Western civilisation, said Olmert. “We knew what we were doing when decided to respond to their challenge. We shall overcome all the difficulties and win,” the Israeli prime minister stressed.
Leaders speak out over the raid on Qana NEWS.com.au
Israel air strike kills 54 civilians Reuters
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Doubts over 'new Middle East' BBC News
Somewhere in the archives of the BBC's Jerusalem bureau there is a videotaped news report from five years ago, marked "Lebanon Border Flashpoint".On the tape a 30-something reporter strides purposefully over the thistle-strewn hills of northern Galilee and waves a theatrical arm towards Lebanon to the north, and Syria to the east. "This contested region," he declares portentously, "is where some in the Israeli military believe the next Middle East war will begin." The reporter was me. I was up on that border to report on the latest clashes between Israeli troops and their implacable foe, Hezbollah. Plus ca change, you might think. But today, say America and Israel, it's different. Things just cannot be allowed to go back to the way they were, with a heavily-armed Arab militia lurking just across Israel's border.

'New Middle East'
There's talk in Washington of "a new Middle East", a place where the moderate Arab majority refuse to allow the region to be plunged into conflict by troublemakers like Hezbollah and its allies, Syria and Iran. So is that realistic, or is it wishful thinking? America's critics have certainly been quick to dismiss the idea of a new Middle East which they say is drawn up along lines that suit the US and Israel.This week the Palestinian foreign ministry, itself reeling from Israeli air strikes, said the new plan was based on the illusion that the existing political forces in the region could be removed. "What new Middle East?" snorted Lebanon's information minister. He said US proposals for a reformed Middle East had only led to death and destruction in Iraq. And in Iran, the hardline press has even turned the idea on its head. "Hezbollah has disturbed all the West's equations in the region," trumpeted the conservative newspaper Resalat, adding: "Hezbollah is talking about a new Middle East - in which there is no room for Israel!" The close relationship between Iran, Syria and the Shia Lebanese militia Hezbollah has prompted some to question whether Tehran was perhaps behind the latest flare-up of violence.

Repeated conflict
Just before it began, Iran was coming under heavy international pressure to suspend its uranium enrichment programme, suspected of leading to a nuclear bomb. But Western intelligence sources say they have no hard evidence - either from informants or from intercepted communications - that Iran instructed Hezbollah to seize the two Israeli soldiers this month, and thence trigger the conflict in Lebanon. But Iran, which would like to see Israel eliminated as a state, is clearly delighted that an Arab-Israeli conflict is once more back at the centre of world attention. Iran helped establish Hezbollah back in 1982 in an effort to export its Islamic Revolution into the Arab world. Since then Hezbollah has achieved some notoriety in pioneering the suicide truck bomb, blowing up US targets in Beirut and kidnapping Western hostages.Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen have trained Hezbollah's Lebanese fighters and Iranian missiles are supplied to them through Syria. Although Hezbollah is a Shia organisation, it has won huge respect amongst many Arabs at street level, as the only fighting force prepared to take on the might of the Israeli military. They widely credit it with driving Israeli forces out of south Lebanon six years ago.

Political chessboard
This week, the yellow flags of Hezbollah have been fluttering in the streets of Gaza, while portraits of its bearded, turbaned and bespectacled leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, are on public display in Damascus souk. All this is very annoying for the moderate, pro-Western governments in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. They don't like violent change and they don't like Hezbollah, they don't like Iran's current regime and they are wary of a new axis of Shia power stretching across the region, from Iran, through Iraq, to Lebanon. The last thing those pro-Western governments wanted to see was a resurgent guerrilla force upsetting the political chessboard in the region. Their rulers are all too aware of Hezbollah's appeal to their own populations, who grumble privately that this Lebanese militia has done more than their own timid governments have to confront what they call "Israeli aggression".So a recent editorial in the pro-government Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh insisted that Hezbollah's "adventurous stance" had been confronted by the "reasonable stance" of a number of Arab countries. "What is needed urgently now," said the editorial, "is an Arab strategic plan to confront the Iranian strategic plan." It was, it said, a matter of life and death. So behind every conflict in this troubled region there lurk so many layers of conflicting interests, national, religious, and ethnic, sometimes working in concert, mostly not. Navigating one's way through this labyrinth is always a challenge for any journalist in the Middle East. If you don't take someone's side then they invariably think you're against them. But it's a challenge I've always relished, and one I'm just about to experience again as I fly back to the Middle East this afternoon to report once more for the BBC.
By Frank Gardner, BBC security correspondent

Day-by-day: Lebanon crisis - week three BBC News
A day-by-day look at how the conflict involving Israel and Lebanon is unfolding in its third week.

• Day-by-day: Week one
• Day-by-day: Week two

SUNDAY 30 JULY
Dozens of people are reported to have been killed or injured in an Israeli air strike on a building housing civilians in the southern Lebanese town of Qana. In Beirut, hundreds of protesters stage a violent demonstration, attacking the UN building and chanting slogans against the US and in support of Hezbollah. Hezbollah guerrillas meanwhile battle Israeli ground forces that have made a fresh incursion into southern Lebanon. Israeli naval vessels fire shells into the hills to support ground forces. Hezbollah's TV station says the group has fired more rockets into Israel. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to meet Israel's defence and foreign ministers in an apparent effort to rally support for the deployment of a large UN-backed peacekeeping force in the region.

SATURDAY 29 JULY
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to the region. She is expected to lobby for a UN Security Council resolution that would lead to an international force being deployed in southern Lebanon. Without specifying, Ms Rice said that she was about to enter intensive difficult negotiations that would require hard and emotional decisions for both Lebanon and Israel. Israeli officials tell the BBC that Israel may be willing to stop fighting as soon as a UN resolution is passed next week - before the arrival of any new peace force - and that they will not insist on Hezbollah disarming first. In more raids, a Lebanese mother and her five children are killed in a new wave of Israeli air raids in southern Lebanon, Lebanese medics said. Israeli forces withdraw from the southern Lebanese village of Bint Jbeil - a Hezbollah stronghold - which they had been trying to take for some days and where they sustained their heaviest one-day losses since the campaign began. An Israeli air strike closes the main border crossing from Lebanon into Syria, witnesses and officials say. Missiles hit the road between the two states' immigration posts, but apparently on the Lebanese side. A separate Israeli strike wounds two UN monitors in their observation post, the UN says, days after four were killed. This follows a warning by the UN that the killing of its observers on Tuesday may deter countries from contributing to a future peacekeeping force. The UN says children, the elderly and disabled people have been left stranded and supplies are "running out very, very fast" in southern Lebanon and calls for a three-day truce to let aid in. But an Israeli government spokesman says there is no need for a temporary ceasefire because Israel has opened a humanitarian corridor to and from Lebanon. In a new television message, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah says more central Israeli cities would be targeted if the Israeli offensive continues.

• Israeli army relatives speak
• Mercy mission into Beirut
• Bush-Blair axis solid

Annan calls for action

FRIDAY 28 JULY
US President George W Bush says an international force must be quickly despatched to Lebanon, to bolster the Lebanese army and help distribute humanitarian aid. After talks in Washington with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mr Bush says the US and UK want to achieve a "lasting peace" in the region, but neither leader calls for an immediate ceasefire. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will return to the region on Saturday, Mr Bush says, ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the crisis next week. A US state department spokesman dismisses an Israeli suggestion that it has the world's authorisation to continue bombing Lebanon as "outrageous", insisting the US is doing all it can to bring an end to the conflict. The UN calls for a 72-hour truce in the conflict zone to allow humanitarian aid in and to get casualties out. Israel carries out dozens of fresh strikes on Lebanon. Lebanese officials say at least 12 people are killed. Hezbollah fires a barrage of more than 100 rockets into northern Israel. It says it has made its deepest strike into the country so far with a new long-range rocket called the Khaibar-1. Israeli police confirm an attack by a previously unknown rocket near the town of Afula. Two mortar rounds strike a convoy of vehicles carrying civilians escaping the violence in southern Lebanon, wounding two people travelling in a German TV car. The Israeli Defence Forces say they do not believe the mortars were theirs. The UN announces plans to relocate unarmed observers from their post along the Israeli border to positions manned by Unifil, the UN peacekeeping force.

• Bush aims for rapid Lebanon force
• UN calls for humanitarian truce
• US 'outrage' over Israeli claims

Video - Blair and Bush news conference in full

THURSDAY 27 JULY
Israel says the decision in Rome not to call for an immediate ceasefire indicates backing from world powers for the offensive to continue. The Israeli security cabinet decides to call up more military reserves to refresh troops fighting in southern Lebanon but rules out widening the military offensive. Israel launches further air and artillery attacks on suspected Hezbollah targets, while fighting continues around the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon. More rockets are fired into northern Israel by Hezbollah militants despite warnings from the Israeli army that any village from which rockets are launched will be totally destroyed. Al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri warns al-Qaeda will respond to attacks on Muslims in Lebanon and Gaza.

• Israel says world backs offensive
• Al-Qaeda 'to avenge Israel deeds'
• Israeli press says fight must go on

Video - Al-Qaeda video

WEDNESDAY 26 JULY
EU and Arab states, together with the US and Russia, agree at talks in Rome to work towards a ceasefire with "utmost urgency", but stop short of calling for an immediate truce. A joint statement backs the idea of an international force with a UN mandate. It says a ceasefire must be "lasting and sustainable", reflecting the US position. An initial UN report into the deaths of four UN observers says the UN repeatedly urged Israel to stop firing in the area around its post before a rocket landed on the site. Israel describes the event as a "tragic mistake". Nine Israeli soldiers are killed and 22 injured in fierce fighting around the town of Bint Jbeil, a strategically located Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon. It is the biggest Israeli loss of life since the conflict began. Another dies in the nearby village of Maroun al-Ras. In Gaza, at least 23 people are killed in Israeli air strikes, medical sources say, and Israeli tanks move back into the north of the Gaza Strip.

• Agencies struggle to provide aid[list]
• High death toll in Gaza clashes

Video - The UN post

'57 Slaughtered' as Israeli air strike hits children

By Kathy Gannon

The bodies of at least 27 children were found in the rubble, said Abu Shadi Jradi, a civil defence official at the scene. At least 10 children's bodies had been pulled out, placed in plastic bags and loaded in ambulances, he said.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14272.htm

Video Report From Qana Massacre

3 Minute Video

Elderly, women and children were among those killed in the raid, which wrought destruction over a wide area.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14276.htm


Pictures From Qana

"We want this to stop," shouted villager Mohammed Ismail. " May God have mercy on the children. They came here to escape the fighting. They are hitting children to bring the fighters to their knees."

WARNING

Graphic images depicting the reality and horror of Israel's Invasion and destruction of Lebanon.

Click here to continue
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14273.htm


Qana 1996, Qana 2006 and The Arab Dis-League

By Mohamed Khodr

The Muslim masses silence is a betrayal to our faith, lands, resources, and brotherhood. Israel kills, America supports, and Arabs accept what they must. Not one Arab nation pulled its Ambassadors out of Israel or America, not one called for boycotts or massive protests, not one leader went to Lebanon for support, not one dares challenge America lest there be a "regime change".
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14281.htm

More “Birth Pangs” in Rice's “New Middle East”

By Mike Whitney

Assistant Secretary of State Nicholas Burns appeared on the Sunday talk shows defending Israeli aggression as the necessary path to achieving a “durable peace”. In the Orwellian-world of Bush doublespeak, a “sustainable cease-fire” is a tacit endorsement of perennial war.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14282.htm

Under fire in Beirut

By Robert Fisk

In his second weekly dispatch from the front line, veteran war reporter confesses he was so scared after one attack that he could not put pen to paper.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14271.htm

A nice little war

By Uri Avnery

They have mounted a tiger, and can't be sure of getting off without being torn to pieces. War has its own rules. Unexpected things happen and dictate the next moves. And the next moves tend to be in one direction: escalation.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14275.htm

The Pathology Of Israeli Power

By Issa Khalaf

The Israeli self-image of rationality, self-confidence, restraint, pragmatism, and marshal moral superiority are delusions and myths, constructed to protect the Israeli psyche, manipulated by the state to keep alive the specter of existential terror in the Israeli public and to disguise the state's raison d'etre, expansion and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14280.htm

An Unfair War

Must watch 5 minute video

Escape to where?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14279.htm

Beirut shuns Rice as Israel Kills 57 Civilians:

The Lebanese government asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday to put off a visit to Lebanon after an Israeli airstrike that killed more than 50 people.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14274.htm

Olmert Justifies Israeli Murder Of Civilians:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert justified the action, saying Tel Aviv had warned residents to leave and put the blame on Hezbollah for launching rockets from the area.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7004376922

Israel halts fire for Qana probe :

Israel has agreed a 48-hour suspension of air strikes over southern Lebanon to investigate the killing of more than 54 civilians on Sunday, the US says.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5229932.stm

Peretz: Fighting in Lebanon to continue at least two weeks :

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

Israel failing to give U.S. the military cards it needs :

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is the figure leading the strategy of changing the situation in Lebanon, not Prime Minister Ehud Olmert or Defense Minister Amir Peretz. She has so far managed to withstand international pressure in favor of a cease-fire
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744043.html

Olmert: Israel not in a hurry for cease-fire:

"I think it needs to be clear that Israel is not in a hurry to have a cease-fire before we reach a situation in which we can say that we achieved the central goals that we set down for ourselves," Olmert said before the government's weekly cabinet meeting.
http://tinyurl.com/rnsq5

Syria US support for Israel no longer justified:

"These bombs...Are American bombs," Said Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Jaafari. "They call them laser-guided bombs but actually they are hatred-guided bombs, and unfortunately these bombs are made in the USA," said.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3283777,00.html

Syrian president denounces Israeli state terrorism :

"The massacre committed by Israel in Qana this morning shows the barbarity of this aggressive entity. It constitutes state terrorism committed in front of the eyes and ears of the world," Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) quoted President al-Assad as saying.
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0...09724185649.htm

U.S. Plan: A New Mideast Where There Is No Resistance to Occupation:

Rice, wants the international community to hold Hezbollah down while Israel punches it to death.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&...d=29&m=7&y=2006

Hamas vows to avenge Qana deaths with attacks, even bombings :

Hamas on Sunday vowed to carry out attacks on Israel that could include suicide bombings in response to an Israeli air strike on the Lebanese village of Qana that killed over 50 civilians.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744339.html

Gunmen storm U.N. compound in Gaza City - witnesses:

Palestinian protesters stormed the U.N. compound in Gaza City on Sunday during a protest against Israel's bombing of a building in southern Lebanon that killed around 60 people, witnesses and U.N. staff said.
http://tinyurl.com/q9f3o

Pakistan bans Shias from going to Iran:

Pakistan has banned Shias from travelling to Iran after US intelligence expressed fears that they might sneak into Lebanon to join the Hezbollah to fight Israel.
http://tinyurl.com/q25cw

Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar : Islamic states except Iran are controlled by US administration :

The Arabs have to rely on themselves and not wait for external help otherwise they will wait for another 50 years. Perhaps Arabs should listen to what Malcolm X said in 1965: “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14278.htm


Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Middle East: With friends like these... :

According to US officials “whatever the outrage on the Arab streets, Washington believes it has strong behind-the-scenes support among key Arab leaders also nervous about the populist militants -- with a tacit agreement that the timing is right to strike.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14277.htm

Israel strikes Syria border crossing:

One person was wounded when three missiles slammed into the last customs building at the crossing point, digging craters in the middle of the road, they said.
http://www.dawn.com/2006/07/30/int10.htm

Irish refused bombs sent to Prestwick airport:

BOMBS destined to be used by Israel are being flown via Scotland only because the Irish government refused to allow them to land on its soil.
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1104532006

The Wisdom Of Retreat

By Sebastian Mallaby

Even before the death toll spiked yesterday, the Bush administration's diplomacy on Lebanon looked like a long shot. The goal, as laid out by administration officials, is to secure a cease-fire that removes the threat that Hezbollah poses to Israel. But Hezbollah's central function is to threaten...

To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Olmert: The war goes on, there is no ceasefire.

July 31, 2006, 9:48 PM (GMT+02:00)

The war will end when the threat to the Israeli people ends and the kidnapped soldiers are returned. And we will win. This assertion by the Israeli prime minister drew applause from his audience of mayors and civic leaders of the beleaguered northern Israeli towns Monday, July 31. Talking to UK premier Tony Blair, Olmert said: It will be possible to implement a ceasefire but only after a multinational force is in place.

He followed defense minister, Amir Peretz’s rejection of a ceasefire until Israel’s goals are achieved.

Addressing the Knesset Monday, July 31, Peretz said, “A truce now would let the extremists raise their heads anew.” Israel will expand and strengthen its offensive against Hizballah in Lebanon, he said. In Beirut, Lebanese officials said Lebanon would accept nothing but an unconditional immediate Israeli ceasefire before any further discussions.

Condoleezza Rice earlier said she believes a lasting ceasefire and a lasting settlement can be achieved this week by the UN. Speaking before departing Jerusalem for Washington, the US Secretary of State announced the UN will be asked to approve this week a comprehensive settlement based on a ceasefire, political principles for a long-term settlement and the authorization of an international force to help the Lebanese army keep the peace and maintain its authority in the whole of the country.

DEBKAfile notes: Rice never once mentioned Hizballah or the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers in this regard because Hizballah does not accept to any of those points. Hizballah and other Lebanese militias now threaten to fight any international force setting foot in south Lebanon as they fought the US and French troops in Lebanon in 1983.

Speaking before departing Jerusalem for Washington, the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the UN will be asked to approve this week a comprehensive settlement based on a ceasefire, political principles for a long-term settlement and the authorization of an international force to help the Lebanese army keep the peace and maintain its authority in the whole of the country.

She found broad agreement that armed groups should be prohibited in areas where the international force is deployed, an international boycott to prevent the delivery of weapons to that area, and the disarming by Lebanon of unauthorized groups.

DEBKAfile notes: Rice never once mentioned Hizballah or the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers in this regard because Hizballah does not accept to any of those points. Before the Qana attack, France obtained Hassan Nasrallah’s consent to a ceasefire, provided Israel agreed to withdraw from the Shaaba Farms and hand the enclave to the UN. PM Ehud Olmert denied any such Israeli consent. However, it is no longer relevant. The Qana attack derailed the US-French initiative and the US secretary spent the night picking up the pieces for a new one. Hizballah and other Lebanese militias now threaten to fight any international force setting foot in south Lebanon as they fought the US and French troops in Lebanon in 1983. It is therefore hard to see how the new initiative Condoleezza Rice unveiled Monday morning, July 31, can take off any time soon.

Very much up in the air are the format, armament and mandate of the stabilization force Rice proposed to be deployed up to the Israeli and Syria borders “to create a stable environment for US Security Council 1559 and the Taif Accord to be implemented.”

For Hizballah, Syria and Iran, the unclarity and uncertainty give them a window to rebuild Hizballah’s damaged forces in time to sabotage any international force.

The US secretary welcomed Israel’s agreement to a 48-hour pause in its air attacks and its 50-hour corridor for humanitarian purposes.

Copyright 2000-2006 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bush says clear objectives must be achieved in Lebanon and outlines a sequence for the end of hostilities

July 31, 2006, 10:03 PM (GMT+02:00)

Speaking in Miami, the US president stressed the Beirut government must be strong in power and exert full authority over all Lebanon, and a multinational force must be dispatched quickly to expedite aid.

He said Tehran must stop financing terrorist groups like Hizballah and Syria must end its backing for terror and respect Lebanese sovereignty. The Lebanon war, said Bush is part of the larger struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of terror in the Middle East. He reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself.

The sequence outlined by the US president are: the end of Hizballah attacks on Israel, the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers, suspension of Israeli operations in Lebanon and Israel’s eventual withdrawal.

Copyright 2000-2006 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

http://today.reuters.com/misc/PrinterFrien...DEAST-ASSAD.xml

Raise readiness, Assad tells Syrian Army
Mon Jul 31, 2006 5:15 PM ET



DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the Syrian military on Monday to raise its readiness, pledging not to abandon support for Lebanese resistance against Israel.

"We are facing international circumstances and regional challenges that require caution, alert, readiness and preparedness," Assad said.

"The barbaric war of annihilation the Israeli aggression is waging on our people in Lebanon and Palestine is increasing in ferocity," Assad said in a written address on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of the foundation of the Syria Arab Army.

Life after Qana Salon
Human Rights Watch will issue a formal accusation of war crimes against Israel later this week, but the bombing will resume Wednesday. The Israeli bombardments were so intense that it took rescue teams eight hours to reach the southern Lebanese village of Qana yesterday. They found a three-story building collapsed sideways by missiles fired by Israeli planes and 54 people, including 27 children, crushed to death. The hours that followed were the stuff of nightmares: hardened Red Cross workers in tears, fighting for breath; body after body pulled, with bare hands, from the rubble of the reinforced basement; little corpses wrapped in plastic, tied at head and foot and laid side by side.Not one of the dead was a fighter, and no arms were found in the building. Locals denied Israeli claims that Hezbollah fighters had been firing from Qana. It just wasn’t true, they said. "America is responsible for this!" The Israelis, meanwhile, claim more than 150 rockets have been fired from Qana. On Sunday night the Israel Air Force chief of staff showed reporters video footage of what he said was Hezbollah fighters driving rocket launchers into Qana after use.
By Julie Flint
Israeli cabinet approves wider ground offensive CTV.ca
Diplomacy Efforts in Middle East Take on Greater Importance Voice of America
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Israel says no cease-fire yet Chicago Tribune
Rejecting calls for a quick end to the fighting in Lebanon, Israel early Tuesday said it would expand its ground offensive against Hezbollah after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ruled out an early cease-fire. After meeting late into the night, the Israel security Cabinet voted to approve further ground incursions into southern Lebanese villages that Israel says have served as bases for Hezbollah, a government official said. The Israeli Defense Forces already have called up thousands of reserve soldiers for such an operation, and military planners have said they want to establish a 1.2-mile buffer zone north of the border that would be free of Hezbollah fighters. Earlier, as thousands of Lebanese refugees streamed north in hopes of escaping the violence, Israel sharply scaled back air strikes and Hezbollah limited its rocket fire on Israeli villages, making Monday the quietest day since the start of the 20-day-old Israeli campaign. More than 500 Lebanese and 51 Israelis have been killed since the fighting began. The scale-back came after Israel, pressed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, agreed to suspend air attacks for 48 hours, except against imminent threats, as it investigated a strike on the south Lebanese village of Qana on Sunday that killed more than 50 Lebanese civilians, most of them women and children. Olmert expressed regret for that incident Monday. "I am sorry from the depth of my heart for the civilians, adults and children who were killed in the village of Qana," he said. "We were not looking to hurt them, we did not want them to die. They were not our enemies—and were not a target of our planes." The decision to expand the ground offensive was a blow to diplomatic negotiations to end the fighting. Before leaving Israel for Washington, Rice told reporters that she would take to the United Nations "an emerging consensus on what is necessary for both an urgent cease-fire and lasting settlement. I am convinced we can achieve both this week." But Olmert, who is under domestic pressure to show results from the Israeli offensive, rejected any imminent stop to the campaign until two Israeli soldiers are freed by Hezbollah and the militant group has been pushed away from the Israeli border. "There is no cease-fire and there will be no cease-fire in the coming days," Olmert said in a speech. "We are fighting against unrestrained terrorists, and we will not stop the war against them until we remove them from our border." A participant in the late-night security Cabinet meeting told the Associated Press that the Israelis also would resume air strikes "in full force" after the 48-hour suspension expires on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. The participant added that the security cabinet rejected any idea of a cease-fire until an international force is in place in southern Lebanon. Defense Minister Amir Peretz also ruled out an immediate cease-fire and said Israel would broaden its offensive in Lebanon. "A humanitarian gesture is not supposed to harm the aims of the operation," Peretz told parliament. "The Israel Defense Forces will broaden and deepen its activities against Hezbollah. … There must be no agreement to a cease-fire that will take effect immediately." Despite the general suspension of air activity, Israeli ground incursions and artillery strikes continued Monday in southern Lebanon, and armored bulldozers destroyed Hezbollah positions near the border with Israel. Israeli aircraft struck near Taibe after three soldiers were wounded when an anti-tank rocket hit their armored vehicle, the army said. An air strike on a car carrying Lebanese soldiers near the port city of Tyre killed one serviceman and wounded others, the Israeli army and Lebanese security officials said. The army expressed regret over the incident, saying the car was believed to have been carrying a senior Hezbollah member. A third strike hit a truck carrying arms near Lebanon's border with Syria, the army said. In southern Lebanon, roads from villages into the port city of Tyre and heading north were clogged with refugees fleeing the battle zone as a 24-hour safe-passage arrangement went into effect. Tens of thousands of people trapped by the fighting took advantage of the respite to escape, emerging dazed from the buildings where they had been sheltering for days and streaming onto cratered roads in tractors, trucks, buses and cars. Some people walked from the worst hit villages, because there were no undamaged vehicles or fuel available. More than 300 people, many of them elderly, walked three hours from the heavily damaged town of Bint Jbeil, scene of the fiercest battle of the war, to a hospital in Tibnin, where they boarded buses sent by a Lebanese charity to take them to Sidon. "It was the resistance capital, now it is the capital of destruction" said Ibrahim Dagher, who walked to Tibnin with three of his children, his wife and 40 relatives. "We were shelled and rocketed day and night. Many dead people are still under the rubble." The only passable route north from Tyre to Sidon, a dusty back road winding through orchards, was clogged with packed vehicles, all flying white flags despite the promise by Israel that airstrikes would be suspended. In one yellow taxi lay a wounded, bearded young man who appeared to be a Hezbollah fighter. The Lebanese government estimated 35,000 people were on the move across the south, most of them trying to flee the area but some of them attempting to return home to check on their property. Aid convoys trying to seize the opportunity to take needed supplies to the south were held up by the traffic, and one food convoy headed for Qana was unable to reach its destination because of an 8 mile backlog of traffic jamming the narrow road south, according to the World Food Program. In the village of Shihin, just north of the Israeli border, there were scenes of chaos as people tried to cram into vehicles to escape what they said was a night of shelling, possibly by artillery, that occurred after the announced suspension of aerial attacks. "They hit us; they destroyed our home," said Nimr al Turki, who was driving a tractor piled with 26 relatives and neighbors, most of them children and elderly. All had been sheltering in his home when its top floor was hit by a shell the previous night. "We crawled out of the rubble," he said. Most of those who have not fled the fighting until now were the poorest of south Lebanon's poor, the elderly and the infirm, who had no access to their own transportation and could not afford the prices being charged by taxis. Many of the back roads were eerily deserted, winding through abandoned, devastated villages. In a reminder of the dangers of attempting to flee, the wrecks of burnt out vehicles littered many routes. Aid workers found the charred body of a man, ejected from his car by the force of an explosion, lying in a field. According to UN estimates, up to 900,000 Lebanese have been displaced by the fighting. Taking advantage of the lull in air strikes, Lebanese Red Cross teams escorted by UN observers went to the village of Srifa to dig up what are believed to be more than 50 bodies still buried under rubble since an Israeli strike wiped out an entire neighborhood on July 19, the Associated Press reported. Israeli officials say villages such as Srifa were attacked after Hezbollah guerrillas fired rockets from them at Israel and used houses for shelter and as storage sites for rockets.
By Joel Greenberg <jogreenberg@tribune.com> and Liz Sly <lsly@tribune.com>
Bombing reprieve lets innocent flee Advertiser Adelaide
Israeli PM Says No Cease-Fire Coming Now Forbes
Jamaica Observer - Bangkok Post - Aljazeera.net - Ha'aretz - all 4,471 related »

Iraqi Cleric Demands Cease-Fire in Lebanon :

`Islamic nations will not forgive the entities that hinder a cease-fire,'' al-Sistani said, in a clear reference to the United States.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/stor...5983670,00.html


Loopholes let Israeli airstrikes continue:

Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic success in arranging a 48 hour halt to Israeli air strikes contains two loopholes so large that it is having virtually no effect
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14297.htm


Israeli Air Strikes Resume:

Israeli warplanes carried out strikes in southern Lebanon on Monday, hours after agreeing to temporarily halt air raids. Israel accidentally killed a Lebanese soldier when it hit a car it believed was carrying a senior Hezbollah official, the Israeli army said.
http://keyetv.com/national/topstories_story_212064923.html


Peretz: IDF will 'expand and strengthen' attacks on Hezbollah :

Senior government source: Despite IAF curbs, there is no cease-fire
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744695.html


Israel rejects ceasefire:

Israel rejected mounting international pressure on Monday to end its war against Hizbollah and launched a new incursion into Lebanon despite halting most air raids for 48 hours.
http://tinyurl.com/o9x57


UN Security Council rejects Annan's call for immediate cease-fire :

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said he opposed calling for a truce, as requested by Annan in an impassioned plea to an emergency council meeting he called after the strike on Qana
http://www.cggl.org/scripts/new.asp?id=628


Lebanese army stops Israeli helicopters landing:

The Lebanese army opened fire on Israeli helicopters trying to land near a town in the Bekaa valley, preventing them from setting down, Lebanese security sources and witnesses said.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L30832182.htm


'They found them huddled together' :

Muhammad Qassim Shalhoub, a slim 38-year-old construction worker, emerged with a broken hand and minor injuries, but lost his wife, five children and 45 members of his extended family.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14293.htm


A must listen interview:

Robert Fisk Reports From Lebanon on the Israeli Bombing of Qana :

What’s going on in southern Lebanon is an outrage. It’s an atrocity. The idea that more than 600 civilians must die because three Israeli soldiers were killed and two were captured on the border by the Hezbollah on July 12, my 60th birthday -- I’ve spent 30 years of my life watching this, this filth now, you know -- is outrageous. Real audio
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14294.htm


Linda McQuaig : Slaughter Taking Place While Canada Does Nothing :

Hezbollah has no air force or air defences. So the Israeli air force — one of the best in the world — has been able to drop a constant barrage of bombs for the past two weeks on Lebanon, where civilians are essentially defenceless.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14286.htm


Israeli officer refuses to take part in war:

Captain Amir Paster was sentenced on Sunday night to 28 days in a military prison for refusing to take part in the fighting in Lebanon. Paster, 28, arrived at his base after being drafted and told his soldiers that he refused to take part in operations that harm innocent civilians.
http://tinyurl.com/nms8s


Syria's Assad calls Israel's Qana attack terrorism:

"The massacre committed by Israel in Qana this morning shows the barbarity of this aggressive entity. It constitutes state terrorism committed in front of the eyes and ears of the world," Assad said in remarks carried by state news agency SANA.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L30795118.htm


Taking a break from counting his $1/2 Billion per year pay off from U.S. The little king is quite as:

Jordanian MPs call for return of Jordanian ambassador to Israel: The memo called on "the Jordanian government to live up to its historical responsibility," and to immediately discharge the Israeli ambassador from Amman.
http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Lan...=en&DSNO=892344


Egypt's Mubarak warns entire Mideast peace process could collapse : Mubarak is under domestic fire from opposition groups for his refusal to revoke Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/744705.html


Rice's Fallacy:

What if Israel can't win militarily?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14300.htm

Congressional Democrats echo Bush's defense of Israel:

While President Bush routinely faces criticism from congressional Democrats over the Iraq war and his domestic policies, there's been little criticism over his stance on Israel's campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...ld/15159997.htm


Ari Berman: AIPAC's Hold:

It's impossible to talk about Congress's relationship to Israel without highlighting AIPAC, the American Jewish community's most important voice on the Hill. The Congressional reaction to Hezbollah's attack on Israel and Israel's retaliatory bombing of Lebanon provide the latest example of why.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14299.htm


Qana Again : Israel says it was a mistake.

They said the same in 1996 until a video recorded by one of the UN soldiers was handed to The Independent veteran Robert Fisk proved that an Israeli 'drone' was flying low over the base. They knew it was full of refugees and still they bombed it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14289.htm


Israeli Occupation Forces Kill Palestinian in Gaza :

A Palestinian was killed by an Israeli tank shell in the northern Gaza Strip village of Beit Hanoun on Monday, Palestinian medics said.
http://english.people.com.cn/200607/31/eng...731_288516.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060731/pl_af...on_060731194413

Top Republican asks Bush to push for immediate Lebanon ceasefire Mon Jul 31, 3:44 PM ET

A leading Republican senator urged US President George W. Bush to call for an immediate ceasefire in the war between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

"The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now. President Bush must call for an immediate ceasefire. This madness must stop," Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, a possible candidate in the 2008 presidential election, said on the Senate floor.

The Bush administration has been under pressure from Arab and European states to press Israel into halting its offensive, but has received relatively limited pressure from US lawmakers -- especially those in his own party -- to do the same.

Hagel said the US link to Israel was a "special and historic one."

"But, it need not and cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships," he said.

Bush said Monday the United States was "urgently" working to end the conflict, but again resisted calls for an immediate ceasefire and avoided criticism of Israel.




Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.

Israel has lost the war on every front Kazinform, Kazakhstan
At this stage in the war with Hezbollah, Israel cannot achieve anything except further international condemnation together with visceral hatred from Arabs and Muslims everywhere. There are few in the Arab world today who are in the mood for forgiveness and reconciliation after they have gazed in disbelief at tens of tiny corpses being unceremoniously thrown into mass graves, including a one-day-old baby whose parents didn’t even have time to give her a name; KAZINFORM quotes Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk During an emergency summit held in Rome, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was driven to ask delegates “Are we children of a lesser God? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?” Israel’s Defense Minister Amir Peretz wants America’s blessing to continue hostilities for a further ten to fourteen days. He might have got it except for the Israeli bombing of Qana that took the lives of 60 civilians, including 37 children. He may still. Qana had already entered the Lebanese lexicon as a euphemism for “massacre” following a devastating Israeli strike on that southern Lebanese village in 1996. The resulting carnage was thought to have triggered a close to Israel’s Operation Grapes of Wrath. It is understandable, therefore, that incensed Lebanese demonstrators sought to trash the United Nations headquarters in Beirut, although such behavior cannot, of course, be condoned. After all, their government had been begging that body for a cease-fire for weeks to no avail. This is because the US has staunchly refused any condemnation of Israel, leaving the world body open to criticism of being ineffectual, America of extreme pro-Israel bias and Britain of being led by the nose. As messages of condolences and outrage flooded in from nations around the world on Sunday, Lebanese officials told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cancel a scheduled visit to Beirut unless she came armed with an immediate unconditional cease-fire. The time for toothy smiles, kisses and crocodile tears is over. The strongly (or perhaps formerly) pro-American Lebanese prime minister told CBS, “The Israelis are committing state-sponsored terrorism”. In a total departure from the Bush party line, Siniora heaped praise on Hezbollah’s fighters and its leader Hassan Nasrallah “who are sacrificing their lives for the sake of Lebanon.” It is in the Bush administration’s interests to see Hezbollah pummeled and rendered impotent. Rather than perceive the conflict in the context of feuding neighbors, the US has deliberately subsumed it into its “war on terror”. To this end, Bush and his British sidekick have branded Hezbollah a terrorist organization that must be stamped out in order to birth “a new Middle East” — one in which feuding states live contentedly under the American/Israeli boot. Now that Siniora has given Hezbollah legitimacy by publicly patting on the back, Bush will increasingly find this argument a hard sell. Although I should add Fox News viewers and their ilk have already bought into it hook, line and sinker. A new “terrorist” foe was thought to be just what the doctor ordered for George W. Bush’s dwindling popularity rating. Bin Laden has disappeared into the ether. Saddam Hussein awaits the outcome of his kangaroo trial in an American jail. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was duly assassinated and his so-called successor spotted in an Egyptian prison where he’s been languishing for the past six years. The new foe had to be destroyed and humiliated so that the policies of the self-acclaimed leader of the free world could be seen to be working. Unfortunately for Bush, Hassan Nasrallah doesn’t exactly fit the bill. He’s too softly spoken for one, doesn’t engage in outlandish rhetoric or speak longingly of Islamic caliphates from Spain to goodness knows where. Instead, he represents over 40 percent of all Lebanese, so if he’s a terrorist they must be too. Moreover his people haven’t been producing snuff videos when corpses are divorced from their heads. Those pesky Europeans haven’t been much help either. They’ve refused to add Hezbollah to their list of terrorist groups, and so has Russia. Israel’s inability to crush what its spokesmen inevitably refer to as “Khizbollah” has further ruined Bush’s plan. The Israelis were meant to pull a quick, decisive victory out of their hat. After all, they have had years of experience fighting militant groups in occupied Palestine. And, most importantly, they are the ones with the big American bombs, the deadly American F16s and Apache helicopters and the impervious American tanks. Yet almost three weeks into the conflict, Hezbollah is still firing an average of 100 rockets into northern Israel each day and has driven a succession of elite Israeli units out of its southern strongholds. The resistance has further downed an Israeli drone and several helicopters, not to mention achieving a direct hit on an Israeli warship. The result has opened a can of worms. Israelis commentators are turning on their military, accusing it of being ill prepared and ill trained. Defense officials fret over Israel’s diminished deterrent capability. The Bush brigade is said to be disappointed at Israel’s military ineptitude and embarrassed by its attacks on civilians. The international community is up in arms over Israel’s brutality and America’s intransigent stance in the face of calls for an immediate cease-fire. Syria, once considered an irrelevance or even “a low-hanging fruit” has re-established its importance in the region with all roads once again leading to Damascus. The Palestinians have been reinvigorated by Hezbollah’s military successes and progress toward their state has adopted a renewed sense of urgency. As for Hezbollah fighters, they have achieved an almost mythical quality throughout the Muslim world due to their stealth, stoicism, self-discipline and courage under fire. Most importantly, Israel has unwittingly opened up a discussion that was verging on taboo in mainstream Western media. In yesterday’s Guardian, David Clark writes: “How can ‘terrorism’ be condemned while war crimes go without rebuke?” How indeed!However, the outcome of this conflict isn’t ready to be written in stone. With its back against the wall there is a danger that Israel will embark on a scorched earth policy in southern Lebanon. Alternatively, Syria and Iran could get dragged in when Bush’s evangelical support base will merrily prepare themselves for “end times” rapture. The most favorable outcome for Lebanon would be an unconditional cease-fire followed by a prisoner exchange, a return of Sheba Farms to Lebanon and a non-NATO international force with a UN mandate swiftly brought in to police a cordon sanitaire. For Israel, there isn’t one. It arrogantly overplayed its hand and lost the game. Unless, of course, it equates winning with how many children’s coffins it can notch up in the shortest time.
Israel must be stopped Daily News & Analysis
The Qana Massacre Blogcritics.org
Monsters and Critics.com - IsraPundit - St.Petersburg Times.ru - New York Times - all 3,958 related »

Battle Isn't Over, Israeli Leader Says

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared that
Israel had no intention of ending its battle against Hezbollah any
time soon, despite a fragile lull in fighting that allowed some
humanitarian supplies to reach civilians in war-battered Lebanon.
By Laura King and Rone Tempest.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e6G...Io30G2B0HkWi0E2

Israel Warns, Gazans Panic

GAZA CITY - The army says it phones ahead of attacks to limit
casualties. Palestinians decry the tactic. By Ashraf Khalil.
http://email.latimes.com/cgi-bin1/DM/y/e6G...Io30G2B0HkWj0E3

Aluf Benn in Haaretz is a reliable source of info and analysis. Hence his latest on what Olmert want now is very interesting, esepcially the last paragraph. Leon

ANALYSIS: Giving the war an image of victory, not a draw
By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent

Borrowing from the world of soccer beloved to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Israel Defense Forces operation in Lebanon went into overtime on Monday.

Olmert wants to take another stab at a decisive conclusion before the UN Security Council blows the final whistle. That's why he convened the cabinet on Monday to approve a wide-scale ground operation targeting villages used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

Olmert is fighting the battle over public opinion, both at home and abroad. He wants people to see the war as a victory, not a draw. It was this attitude that led Olmert to tell a conference of mayors on Monday that the operation is continuing despite the unfortunate deaths of dozens of Lebanese civilians in Qana Sunday.

"Israel is continuing to fight," the prime minister said. One can imagine the slogan as part of a commercial for a bank, on billboards or car bumpers. "There is no cease-fire, and there will be no cease-fire in the upcoming days," Olmert promised to the cheers of mayors in attendance. Conference participants made it clear they want the operation to continue.

Olmert read a long speech, filled with the now familiar components of his recent speeches: the reference to the fallen and captive soldiers, the appeal to the Lebanese people, the promise to win at the price of "worry, uncertainty − and yes, also pain, tears and blood." This time around, Olmert's speechwriter, Shaul Shenhav, also included a quote from Israeli poet Nathan Alterman.

The prime minister also contributed quite a few of his own words, and practiced the speech twice at his bureau before getting on stage to win public support for the next − and possibly final − phase of the Lebanon operation.

But for all the speeches, this conflict is lacking the kind of image that will help make it memorable - images like the paratroopers at the Western Wall or Ariel Sharon with a bandage around his head. What will the image of the second Lebanon war be?

Officials at the prime minister's bureau say it will be the image of soldiers in the multinational force who will deploy on the Lebanese side of the Blue Line and at the Syrian and Lebanese border crossings. It's hard to believe, but there you have it: The Israeli political elite are looking forward to the arrival of Captain Francoise of the French Foreign Legion and his comrades, who will be stationed on the border along with Lebanese army units. That hadn't crossed anyone's mind three weeks ago, and now it's the objective of the Israeli war; Olmert promised to continue fighting until the international army takes control of positions and villages that Hezbollah had been using until the war.

Israel’s cabinet authorizes an expanded ground operation to push Hizballah’s armed presence up to a line north of the Litani River, an average 20km deep

August 1, 2006, 1:57 PM (GMT+02:00)

Early Tuesday, Aug. 1, Day 21 of the War, the Israel air force struck near the N. Lebanese panhandle town of Hermel on the Syrian border, one of the key routes through which Hizballah is re-supplied with Iranian-Syrian arms and the location of a secret refuge used by Hassan Nasrallah and his top command, as DEBKAfile revealed on July 17.

Israeli forces are also operating in several towns and villages in the south, reporting 20 Hizballah killed in fresh clashes.

Nasrallah took with him to Hermel Hizballah’s “chief of staff” Ibrahim Akil, its head of intelligence and terror Imad Mughniyeh and commander of special operations Halil Harab. Like Osama bin Laden, they have set up a command center in customized bunkers hewn in a remote mountain hideout.

Villagers on eastern slopes of Mt Hermon were warned Monday, July 31, to leave their homes ahead of Israeli operation against Hizballah. Hizballah are firing Sagger anti-tank missiles at another Israeli contingent of armored infantry and tanks which is heading into the Eastern Sector of south Lebanon along the road from Metullah to al Khiam.
Copyright 2000-2006 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

Iranian FM Manouchehr Mottaki meets his French counterpart in Beirut Monday. DEBKAfile: The bargaining over an international force begins

August 1, 2006, 1:22 AM (GMT+02:00)

Mottaki arrived in the Lebanese capital from Damascus shortly after French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, who pointed to the importance of maintaining contacts with Tehran as part of efforts to resolve the crisis in Lebanon.

DEBKAfile: Paris thus opens a direct track to Tehran and Hizballah to explore their conditions for accepting a multinational force, its format and mandate. When Condoleezza Rice said Monday morning that a lasting ceasefire and peace force must be achieved at the UN this week - and when Olmert declared that the war goes on and Israel will win – neither knew where the three-talks in Beirut Monday night would lead. It is increasingly apparent that Tehran and Nasrallah hold they key to determining the conditions for a cessation of hostilities.

DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal that Iran stepped squarely and openly into the Lebanon conflict Sunday, July 30, by taking over from Syria the arms supply route for Hizballah running through the Syrian-Lebanese border - which is why Israeli air bombardments have been concentrated on those crossing points since then. Tehran has decided it owns a key national interest in preserving Hizballah and its rocket capabilities as an effective military instrument against Israel.

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources disclose that Iran’s leaders are not quite happy with Hizballah’s performance, having expected a far higher Israeli casualty toll and more extensive war damage. They are now considering upgrading Hizballah’s rocket arsenal with missiles that are heavier and of longer range than the Katyusha rockets thousands of which blitzed Israeli towns in the first 20 days of the war. These rockets may be fired from Syrian-Lebanese border locations.

To ward this development off, the Bush administration did not argue about the Mottaki-Douste-Blazy meeting although amounts to recognition by its senior partner in Lebanon, France, of Iran’s senior status in the Lebanon conflict. Washington hopes Paris can convince Tehran - and thus Nasrallah - to accept a multinational force set up by the UN Security Council. Monday, too, the UN Security Council set an August deadline for Iran to halt uranium enrichment or face sanctions. The Americans believe Tehran will be reluctant to fight the West on two fronts simultaneously and will therefore give way on Lebanon.

Iranian leaders have a different take on the reciprocal effect of the two crises. They regard Hizballah’s three-week stand against the IDF as raising the going price of their consent to a multinational force and will therefore hold out for generous US concessions on their nuclear program, including the lifting of the UN’s deadline.

In his talks with Mottaki, therefore, Douste-Blazy will take note of Tehran’s conditions for a deal and pass them on to Washington. DEBKAfile’s sources expect the Iranian FM to lay down an ultimatum: Unless the US gives way on the nuclear issue, hostilities in Lebanon will escalate and Tehran will deepen its involvement.
Copyright 2000-2006 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Assad tells Syrian army to step up state of readiness and takes two further provocative steps

August 1, 2006, 1:05 AM (GMT+02:00)

Syrian military intelligence agents detonated a bomb at the Golan border fence near Kuneitra, though causing no casualties, and the Syrian president put defense minister Gen. Hassan Turkemeni in charge of military assistance to Hizballah. He also instructed chief of staff Gen. Ali Habib to personally oversee Syrian-Iranian cooperation for military consignments to Hizballah.

In his order of the day to the Syrian army, Bashar Assad wrote: “I call on all units, divisions, brigades and battalions to redouble their training efforts and maintain a high state of readiness. Remember that every drop of sweat you invest in training will save a drop of blood when the time comes.”

He added: “Threats from the ‘masters of the world’ (US and Israel) telling us to beware will not divert us from our path.”

DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources add: For three weeks, Assad has been working up to provoking a limited war engagement with Israel.

1. A close crony, Syrian lawmaker Marwan Habash is advocating the creation of a resistance (terrorist) movement on the Golan Heights - likewise the prominent cleric, Sheikh Asad Kopertou.

2. For the first time in three decades the presidential palace allowed Syrian Druze leaders to openly speak out in favor of an armed campaign to recapture the Golan Heights.

Israeli intelligence leaders are not of one mind about what these steps signify. Some diagnose posturing by Damascus to get in on the Lebanon act while not taking the chance of a missile war with Israel; others argue that the Syrian president must be angling for a limited military confrontation, otherwise he would not so blatantly parade his backing for the Hizballah.

Copyright 2000-2006 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.

The Push beyond the Litani River

DEBKAfile Special Military Analysis

August 1, 2006, 1:34 PM (GMT+02:00)

When on Monday, July 31, Israeli PM Ehud Olmert told the city leaders of the rocket-blitzed north: “The war goes on. There will be no ceasefire in the coming days!” the script was ready for the next stage of the Israeli offensive to its push Hizballah back behind the Litani River. It was approved by the inner cabinet unopposed that night with no time scale. Next morning, Israel ground operations continued to destroy Hizballah outposts close to the border and hit rocket sites, weapons stores and fighters. The air force bombed arms vehicles incoming from Syria in eastern Lebanon.

DEBKAfile’s military analysts say it would be wrong to assume that that the Israeli advance to the Litani comes in the form of troops fanned out the full width of the southern Lebanese front. This is not so. The ground forces are in fact quite far from the river. They are driving forward in three spearheads in the western, central and eastern sectors, battling heavy Hizballah resistance in their path.

The Central Sector: . This force is fighting to take control of the villages of Rumaich and Yaroun south of Bin Jubeil and close to the Israeli border.

The Eastern Sector: This force has split in two, with A Section fighting to cleanse three villages directly north and west of the northernmost Israeli town of Metulla: Kila, Deir Mimas and Taibe; and B Section, which has turned east up the western slopes of Mt. Hermon, to operate 16-18 km east of Metullah in the villages of Shouba, Shab’a and Rachaiya al Foukhar, east of the Litani River and north of Golan. This operation aims at sealing south Lebanon off to outside incursions from the east

The Western Sector: This force entered Lebanon near Zarit (where the Hizballah raid which sparked the war took place on July 12). After cleansing Yarin and Alama Chaab, this unit will head west to Naqoura on the Mediterranean coast to occupy a pocket no more than 2-4 km from the Israeli border.

Five points stand out from these military movements:

1. The IDF aims to carve out and control three enclaves along the Lebanese-Israel border in an area not yet cleansed of Hizballah fighters in nearly three weeks of combat.

2. The operation to push Hizballah out of the south past the Litani River is proceeding very slowly and is still in its early stages.

3. The IDF will need another 3 to 4 days just for the initial stage and the attainment of a strip no broader than 3-5 km from the Israeli border. Another 20 km of hostile territory remain to be traversed and neutralized before the Litani is reached. Therefore, the talk of winding this operation up by the end of the week, as some Israeli officials have suggested is totally unrealistic. While the 48-hour qualified halt in Israeli attacks induced a euphoric sense in some parts of Israel including the war was over, there is still a long way to go.

A more realistic estimate is up to 14 days. This fits with the time-scale Israeli defense minister Amir Peretz offered the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice before she left the Middle East Monday, July 31.

4. Even if one of the three forces reaches the Litani, Hizballah concentrations will remain behind, the largest around the Mediterranean town of Tyre and its satellite Palestinian refugee camps. It is hard to imagine Israeli forces going in for a large-scale clean-out of this densely population enclave. Israeli commanders will prefer encirclement and siege. A decision will also have to be taken about the small town of Tebnine and the entire Jebel Amel mountain region of central Lebanon. Here too, Israeli tacticians may settle for artillery and aerial control over Hizballah’s ability to fire rockets from this stronghold.

5. The operation to control territory up to the Litani River is beset by a number of difficulties:

One: Hizballah has halted its rocket assault on northern Israel as part of the fog of war to keep Israeli guessing about its next steps. The Israeli air force was forced against its will by the policy-makers in government to release figures showing war gains that have degraded Hizballah’s war machine, such as two-thirds of its long-range Zelzal-2 missiles destroyed. But the fact remains that after three weeks of warfare, air force intelligence and AMAN cannot say for sure how many rockets, launchers and operators remain to Hizballah arsenal and where they are cached.

Two:> The IDF has not so far plumbed the full extent of Hizballah’s bunker network across Lebanon.

Three: After sustaining heavy losses, Hizballah still retains enough manpower to mount counter-attacks on Israeli tanks and armored infantry units as they advance. They will save themselves casualties by avoiding frontal attacks and rather harassing the advancing forces from the flanks and rear.

Four: Hassan Nasrallah and his Iranian sponsors are believed to still hold surprises up their sleeve, most likely preparing to land them in the small hours of Wednesday, August 2, when Israel’s limited suspension of air strikes expires.

Olmert did in fact make a point of warning that there is still some hard going ahead before the war is over and Israel has not seen the end of Hizballah’s rockets. The conditions for a multinational stabilization force to take over southern Litani are still very much up in the air. Until then, even after Israeli forces reach the Litani, the territory will remain volatile. More combat lies ahead to defend the pockets they have occupied.

The Qana Trap

DEBKAfile Special Report

July 30, 2006, 2:24 PM (GMT+02:00)
The unfortunate South Lebanese village of Qana has been rigged time and again as a trap to snatch Israel and its international reputation in its jaws. In 1996, a stray Israel shell aimed at Hizballah inadvertently killed 100 civilians, bringing a former Israeli counter-terror operation “The Grapes of Wrath” to a dismal, foreshortened end.

Hizballah knows from long experience that maximizing Lebanese civilian casualties is the most effective way to disarm Israel and its military, using international opprobrium as its instrument. Embedding its combat operations among helpless civilians is an old and proven method.

The prime minister who first fell into that trap was Shimon Peres, deputy premier in the Olmert government in 1996. A world outcry forced him to bow to Hizballah’s terms for a ceasefire. The Shiite terrorists agreed to discontinue its attacks on Israeli civilians (which they never upheld), but assaults on Israeli soldiers were not deemed violations.

Ten years on, the Qana village tragedy confronts prime minister Ehud Olmert with the same kind of horrific weight to capitulate to an instant ceasefire, thereby granting Hassan Nasrallah and his rocket arsenal a free hand to continue to bludgeon two million Israeli civilians.

When, Sunday morning, July 30, Olmert told the cabinet: “We are not in a hurry to reach a ceasefire before our goals are achieved,” he did not know about the Israeli chopper which two hours earlier had sent ordnance flying over a three-story building in Qana village, which housed civilians as well as a Hizballah site for shooting rockets against the Israeli towns of Haifa and Nahariya. The death toll was at first appalling – 57 civilians including 37 children, later Sunday the Red Cross reported the finding of 28 bodies.

The Qana disaster abruptly derailed the diplomatic initiatives to halt the hostilities put together in the last ten days through painstaking efforts in Washington, Paris, Jerusalem and Beirut, as well as the understandings the Israeli prime minister reached with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice in their face to face conversation in Jerusalem the night before, Saturday, July 29. Olmert’s statement to the cabinet will go down as a misplaced, mistimed assertion by an inexperienced leader. By failing to understand the tempo of war, he was overtaken by the Qana disaster.

He also wasted precious time by relying on Israeli air might, its navy and artillery to defeat Hizballah. Even the ground forces sent in eventually were not correctly used. Instead of deploying small, rapid teams for lightening raids on Hizballah positions, bunkers and villages and moving on to the next, large contingents fought day after day against Hizballah strongholds in Maroun es Ras and Bint Jubeil supported by armored force and artillery fire. Hizballah made good use of the advantage it enjoyed of speed to regroup and return to the fray. A salutary shift in tactics was finally apparent Saturday night.

This error was the outcome of two shortcomings:

1. The slow responses of the IDF’s northern command and central military war room. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that towards the end of the week, general staff headquarters took over the management of the campaign from the northern command.

2. A shortage of tactical intelligence on Hizballah’s field operations and methods of warfare, which has turne out to be the Israeli military’s Achilles heel in the Lebanon war. In these circumstances – and in response to Hassan Nasrallah’s pose as the victor, which is far from the case – Olmert must start moving fast, else another unforeseen disaster like Qana will again catch him unawares and snatch the pace of events out of his hands.

The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

Analysis: Racing the clock to avoid defeat
Anshel Pfeffer, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 1, 2006

It's not the soldiers. Anyone who has despaired of the Israeli
education system should spend a few hours with the 19- and 20-year-old
men on the northern border. They're articulate, intelligent and have a
sense of purpose and professionalism that if anything makes them
better than previous IDF generations.

It's not the intelligence, either. If anything surprised Hizbullah, it
was the accuracy of the air force strikes on their positions. No
intelligence is perfect, but Israel had a pretty good picture of
Hizbullah's fortifications complex and its overall strategy.

It's not the confidence and morale on the home front. Just as it stood
up to the prolonged Palestinian terrorist offensive, the Israeli
public has remained stoically confident in the face of indiscriminate
and numerous Katyusha attacks.

It's not even the international pressure. If in past wars, Israel
could say that total victory was snatched by diplomatic machinations,
this time there was almost carte blanche support from the world's only
superpower, which has a vested interest in our military success.

Even the disaster at Kafr Kana on Sunday didn't drastically change the
picture. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice didn't cave in to the
international outcry and left a relieved Jerusalem on Monday morning
with a temporary suspension of air strikes but no demand for an
immediate cease-fire.

So why is Hizbullah still capable of firing over a hundred rockets
daily into Israeli towns (Monday's hiatus is regrettably temporary)?
Why are Golani and the Paratroopers brigades still skirmishing with
small groups of guerrillas in villages two kilometers away from the
border? Why have the politicians and generals gradually downgraded the
objectives of this operation to the questionable achievement of a
multi-national force that might or might not do the job for us in the
murky future?

How have we lost the unaccustomed overseas support so quickly? Why are
American supporters despairing of our lack of success on the
battlefield? And why are more and more Israelis suddenly waking up to
the fact that we might not win this war?

There are of course specific answers to all these questions. Over six
years and with Syrian and Iranian assistance and guidance, Hizbullah
managed to stockpile a quantity and range of missiles rivaling that of
most armies around the world. It prepared well against just the kind
of operation taking place now, distributing weapons, ammunition and
building fortifications in 170 strongholds in southern Lebanon and
establishing hundreds of fixed and mobile missile launching sites.

Hizbullah has no compunctions about fighting to the very last Lebanese
and no degree of bombardment is going to motivate the ineffectual
Lebanese government to dislodge the organization that has usurped its
sovereignty.

All this leads up to the unavoidable conclusion that the air campaign,
the thousands of missions flown against targets throughout Lebanon,
might have caused extensive damage to Hizbullah, but in many cases, it
was like using a 10-kilo sledgehammer to squash a scorpion that has
already scurried underground.

The tank and infantry battalions operating on the ground have fought
with conspicuous bravery, but the scale of the job is just too large
for the IDF's regular units. To clear all the Hizbullah positions up
to the Litani River, they would have to stay there until Rosh Hashana.
To finish off the job in a reasonable time frame, more than the three
reserve divisions called up will have to be thrown in to the fight and
the operation will go on long after this weekend, the time limit that
commanders are beginning to discuss.

But international support is notoriously fickle, and the Americans are
growing restless. The ground offensive which seemed to be going at an
almost leisurely pace over the past two weeks is suddenly turning into
a race against time to avoid a moral victory for Hizbullah. The Monday
night security cabinet meeting was supposed to decide on an immediate
widening of the operation. The forces were already standing by, but it
might be too late. If Israel is forced to accept a cease-fire by
week's end, they won't have enough time to do the job. The generals
and the politicians will begin accusing each other of not calling up
the reservists and using them early enough.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke on Monday evening of "long days of
warfare still facing us." Perhaps he heard from Rice something
different concerning the time Israel still has at its disposal than
what she said at her press conference before leaving Jerusalem.

The 1982 Lebanon trauma and the natural reticence of the government to
send soldiers on a mission from which obviously dozens of them will
not return stayed the cabinet members' hands from voting for a wider
ground offensive, even after the IDF began demanding it last Thursday.
Now most of the ministers have realized that despite the sacrifice,
it's unavoidable.
But is there enough time?

This article can also be read at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...icle%2FShowFull

Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/

The Globe and Mail
THE MIDEAST CONFLICT: THE SCENE
Farewell to arms for Hezbollah is unlikely, experts say

PATRICK MARTIN

BEIRUT -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday in
Jerusalem that the UN Security Council could reach a deal on a
sustainable ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon conflict "this week." But
if Ms. Rice thinks that deal will include a provision to disarm the
militant Hezbollah group, she had better think again.

Flush from their apparent ability to survive Israeli attacks, and
basking in the adulation of a grateful country, Hezbollah would appear
to have little motive to do so.

"There's no way they'll disarm, at least not in the foreseeable
future," said Amal Saad Ghorayeb, a professor at Lebanese American
University and author of Hizbullah: Politics and Religion. "No one in
Lebanon even uses the term 'disarm,' " she said. "If anything, they
talk about 'arms management.' "

In truth, Hezbollah has reportedly discussed arms management as part
of a "national dialogue" roundtable that has been taking place among
Lebanon's political leaders for the past three months. While no one
outside the group has seen the document, Prof. Ghorayeb says Hezbollah
leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah sent a 600-page report offering
different options for Hezbollah to reduce its arms -- provided certain
conditions are met.

"The most important condition is that Lebanon have a viable defence
strategy," Prof. Ghorayeb said. "Until there's an alternative to
defending this country, they won't disarm," she said. "And they know
there won't be one for a long time."

That may be the case, but Israel, with the support of the United
States, launched its attack on Hezbollah three weeks ago with the
express aim of disabling Hezbollah. Neither Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert nor U.S. President George W. Bush appears interested in
settling for anything less. If that can't be achieved on the
battlefield, both leaders reason, then it should be dictated by the
Security Council.

The Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora is not in a position to force
Hezbollah to disarm. Not only are half the soldiers in the Lebanese
army Shiites, and probably unwilling to turn against the powerful Shia
Hezbollah, no one here wants to risk any kind of conflict; the memory
of Lebanon's bloody 15-year civil war is still fresh in people's
minds.

Besides, Mr. Nasrallah is seen in this country as the second coming of
Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic Egyptian leader who preached Arab
nationalism. "There hasn't been anyone like him [Nasrallah] for a long
time," said Karim Makdisi, a professor of politics at the American
University of Beirut. "People are desperate for leadership," he said,
"and Nasrallah, in his calm, rational way, provides it."

"Of course, it helps that his militia has been able to defeat the
Israelis," Prof. Makdisi added.

Walid Jumblatt, the powerful leader of Lebanon's Druze, says that many
people are supporting Hezbollah simply because it's fighting the
Israelis.

Mr. Jumblatt, speaking from his palatial home looking out from the
Shouf Mountains in Lebanon's north, was a critic of Hezbollah's July
12 capture of two Israeli soldiers, the event that triggered this
conflict. He mocked the group's "excuse" of wanting to bargain for
their own prisoners in Israel. Given the devastation to Lebanon that
resulted from Israel's retaliation, he said, "these must be the most
expensive prisoners in the world."

But even Mr. Jumblatt, part of the so-called March 14 group that
questioned Hezbollah's right to continue to bear arms, acknowledges
that Hezbollah cannot now be forced to disarm. "Hezbollah is
victorious," he said. "The only question is what will they do with
this victory? Give it to Lebanon -- a sovereign, independent Lebanon?
Or give it to someone else [such as] Syria and Iran?"

Mr. Jumblatt, who once presided over his own powerful militia, hopes
Hezbollah will remain committed to a multicultural Lebanon. But, as
for disarming them, the best that can be hoped for, he said, is that
Hezbollah turn its militia over to the Lebanese army.

Prof. Makdisi, a Protestant Christian, believes Hezbollah is mainly a
national movement committed to a Lebanese agenda, not one dictated by
Iran or anyone else. "Nasrallah does not want to create some kind of
Islamic state," he said. "He has gone out of his way to reassure
Christians and Sunni Muslims, that his victory will be a victory for
all Lebanese, not just for Hezbollah."

Wouldn't Prof. Makdisi prefer to see Hezbollah disarmed? "Eventually,
of course," he said. "I don't care about Hezbollah one way or the
other," he added. "But as long as the Arab-Israeli conflict is hot,
Hezbollah is a very good card for us to have in our hand. Take it
away, and what clout would we have?"

Of course, the UN Security Council meeting this week might mandate an
international force to come in and try forcibly to disarm Hezbollah.
"I wouldn't advise it," Prof. Makdisi said. "The Americans and French
are still recovering from what happened to them when they came in here
in 1982."

Patrick Martin, The Globe's Comment editor, has returned to report
from the Middle East, where he was the paper's correspondent from 1991
to 1995.

The New Republic Online
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060807&s=ciezadlo080706

BEIRUT DISPATCH

Sheik Up

by Annia Ciezadlo

Post date: 07.28.06

Issue date: 08.07.06

In the early hours of September 13, 1997, the Israeli army killed one
45-year-old woman, two Hezbollah fighters, and six Lebanese soldiers
in the mountains of southern Lebanon. Later that day, Hezbollah
officials viewed video footage of the bodies and confirmed that one of
the slain was a precious kill indeed: 18-year-old Hadi Nasrallah, son
of Hezbollah's leader, Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah.

That evening, Nasrallah was scheduled to give a speech in Haret Hreik,
the southern Beirut suburb where Hezbollah's offices are located. His
second-in-command, Sheik Naim Qassem, offered to speak in his place.
But, when the Lebanese turned on their televisions that evening, they
saw the bearded, boyish face--at 37, looking hardly more than a youth
himself--of Hassan Nasrallah.

Though the entire nation knew by then that he had lost his son,
Nasrallah didn't mention it. He commemorated the anniversary of the
September 13 massacre, a 1993 incident in which the Lebanese army
opened fire on Hezbollah supporters. As he spoke, the audience began
to clamor: Why wasn't he talking about his son?

To this day, people in Lebanon still talk about what happened next.
Breaking off from his speech, Nasrallah noted that the country had
given many martyrs the previous night. He recited the names of the
soldiers and added, almost as an afterthought, that his son and
another Hezbollah fighter were also killed. He thanked God for
choosing a martyr from his family, saying that, while he used to feel
ashamed in front of families whose sons had died for their country,
now he could look them in the eye. Hadi's killing was a victory for
Hezbollah, not for Israel, he pointed out: Instead of fighting each
other, as in 1993, Lebanon's army and its guerrillas were united. "We
are now fighting together and falling as martyrs together," said
Nasrallah, as the audience cheered and chanted Hadi's name. "This is a
great victory for us, of which we are proud." And then he went on with
his speech.

Timur Goksel, then a senior adviser to the United Nations in Lebanon,
watched the speech with a pro-Israel Christian family. "This Christian
family, who hated everything Hezbollah stood for, they started
crying," Goksel recalls.

In the Middle East, political leaders are often old, corrupt, and
repressive; just as often, they are the pampered, Western-educated
sons of aging dictators. There are also guerrilla leaders, who, if
they survive, often end up as petty old despots themselves.

And then there is Nasrallah. Revered by the Shia, respected by his
enemies, he has already earned the distinction of being the only Arab
leader to evict Israel from Arab land without having to sign a peace
treaty. But he is also a religious warrior. Today, as he fights a
lopsided military battle against the Jewish state, he is becoming an
icon--not just in the Arab world, where he was already a hero, but in
the umma, the world of Islam. Nasrallah's war is not just a war
between Lebanon and Israel, or even between Iran and America's allies;
it's a war of myths and images, a battle to transform the Arab and
Islamic worlds. Whatever battlefield setbacks Hezbollah may suffer in
Lebanon, on this larger stage, Nasrallah has already won.

By Friday, July 14, everyone in Lebanon knew it was war. It was clear
that Hezbollah had miscalculated the Israeli response when it
kidnapped two Israeli soldiers two days earlier. Israel had bombed the
airport and bridges, blockaded the ports, and killed dozens of people,
most of them civilians. The Lebanese were succumbing to collective
panic, cleaning out grocery store shelves, buying up gasoline, and
frantically withdrawing U.S. dollars. After a defiant press conference
on the day of the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, Nasrallah had
disappeared from sight. Rumors circulated that he had been struck by
an Israeli missile; people were beginning to wonder if he might be
dead.

Friday evening, at about 8:30, Nasrallah called in to Al Manar,
Hezbollah's TV station. He sounded tired and sleep-deprived, like a
man living underground. But his voice was firm, and the photograph
that accompanied his speech showed, somewhat surreally, his trademark
sunny, open smile. He began by offering condolences to the families of
the martyrs, who had given their lives "in the noblest confrontation
and battle that the modern age has known, or rather that all history
has known." He taunted the Arab regimes that had abandoned him and
reminded the Lebanese of the victory they had won on May 25, 2000,
when Israeli troops withdrew from southern Lebanon.

Then he did something no one from Hezbollah had ever done before.
Reminding his audience that he had promised them "surprises," he
announced that they would begin momentarily. "Now, in the middle of
the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that has attacked the
infrastructure, people's homes, and civilians--look at it burning," he
said calmly, almost matter-of-factly. As he spoke, out at sea, an
Iranian-made C802 missile crashed into the warship. We could see an
orange glow, like flares, shooting up from the sea to the sky.

Everyone tuned in to Nasrallah that night. I live in a mixed Beirut
neighborhood, not heavily Shia or even exclusively Muslim. But, when
he spoke these words, from the buildings around me, I heard a
surround-sound rustle of cheers and applause. Outside, caravans of
cars rolled through the abandoned streets, and the drivers honked
their horns.

It was classic Nasrallah, charismatic and pointed, as if to underscore
his difference from other Arab leaders. "In the Arab world, you have
two kinds of rhetoricians: the very fiery, passionate kind, who make a
lot of false promises, a Yasir Arafat--the typical Arab rambling and
passion that gets you nowhere," says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor
of political science at Lebanese American University and author of
Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion. "And you have others who are
populist leaders, who are more plainspoken and practical. And
Nasrallah is in between both."

With his dramatic attack on the Israeli ship, Nasrallah upped the
stakes, and not just for Lebanon. This was the first time any Arab
leader had staged an attack on an Israeli target and announced it
simultaneously, live on television. It was as though he had heeded the
words of Osama bin Laden's closest adviser, Ayman Al Zawahiri, who
wrote in a letter to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in
Iraq, that "more than half of this battle is taking place in the
battlefield of the media."

"Nasrallah, he's becoming like bin Laden--a star," says Lebanese
journalist Paula Khoury. "Because now he has this ability to address
the world. This is a new thing, and it's dangerous."

Hezbollah's pioneering tactic of massive suicide bombings once
inspired bin Laden, becoming a classic in the Al Qaeda playbook. With
his current war, Nasrallah is innovating once more, this time in the
world of images, creating a new template for speaking to the Muslim
world. Unlike the Sunni jihadists, he attacks the enemy's armies, not
just its civilians. Unlike Zarqawi, Nasrallah has style. He can match
rhetoric to action, as he proved on July 14. And, unlike the
lugubrious bin Laden, he can appear practical and pragmatic,
down-to-earth--even fun. As Saad-Ghorayeb points out, "What other Arab
leader threatens Israel and grins?"

Unlike bin Laden, and in a country where most political leaders
inherit their positions, Nasrallah was born into a poor family. It was
1960, a time when Shia were moving to Beirut in droves, up from the
south of Lebanon--much as American blacks had made the great
migration, and for similar reasons. The son of a greengrocer,
Nasrallah grew up in both southern Lebanon and Karantina, a
hardscrabble Beirut suburb.

After the civil war broke out, the teenage Nasrallah joined Amal, a
Shia empowerment movement created by the charismatic cleric Musa Al
Sadr. When Nasrallah decided to study Islam, an Amal cleric wrote him
a letter of introduction to Muhammad Baqir Al Sadr, the revolutionary
Iraqi cleric who was one of the leading lights of Najaf (and a
relative of current Iraqi militia leader Moqtada Al Sadr). In Najaf,
he studied with Sayyid Abbas Musawi, who would later become the leader
of Hezbollah.

After Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, Iraq became inhospitable to
young Shia clerics, and Nasrallah returned to Lebanon, where he
eventually joined the new, Iranian-backed militia. He rose to become a
commander, serving as ambassador to Iran and leading battles against
Israel in the south. When Israel killed Musawi in 1992, Hezbollah's
central command replaced him with his proteg�, Nasrallah, then only
31.

Nasrallah surprised the nation--and angered Hezbollah hardliners--when
he decided to bring the party into electoral politics, a move that
some saw as tantamount to laying down Hezbollah's arms and giving up
its guerrilla status. But, in 2000, when Israel pulled out its last
troops from the south of Lebanon, Nasrallah became unassailable. And
having members in parliament actually protected Hezbollah's arms by
giving it legitimacy and power in Lebanon's political sphere. Today,
with charity organizations that span the country, 14 of 128
parliamentary seats, and two cabinet ministers, the party is so strong
that people describe it as a "state within a state."

But, even more than this savvy political maneuvering, it was his son's
death, and his stoic reaction to it, that elevated Nasrallah from a
sectarian guerrilla leader to something altogether more potent. In the
days after Hadi was killed, Lebanese leaders from across the political
spectrum--even Christian warlord and bitter enemy Elie Hobeika--paid
their respects to Nasrallah and his wife. Nasrallah capitalized on
this moment of popularity, opening the ranks of Hezbollah to Lebanese
from all sects and forming the Lebanese Brigades, a unit with several
thousand non-Shia recruits. A quintessentially Shia leader--a cleric,
even--had transcended his sect to become a national hero.

So why did Nasrallah, who is nothing if not a master strategist,
launch this war now? Most observers think Hezbollah miscalculated,
that it didn't expect the ferocity of Israel's response. But, in a
way, it doesn't matter: The more Israel pounds Hezbollah and Lebanon's
Shia, the more it burnishes Nasrallah's image as defender of the umma.

There are others who have been vying for that title. In 2004, a
London-based Salafi named Abu Basir Al Tartusi wrote a document called
"The Lebanese Hezbollah and the Exportation of the Shi'ite Rafidite
Ideology." In the document, as translated by the Search for
International Terrorist Entities Institute, Tartusi claimed that
Hezbollah is a front group concocted by an unholy trinity of Iran, the
United States, and "its foster daughter, the state of the sons of
Zion." Its sole purpose is to spread Shia Islam throughout the world
and prevent authentic--i.e., Sunni Salafi--jihad.

The notion of a U.S./Iranian/Zionist axis might sound silly, but it
carries a lot of weight in the jihadosphere. In June, just a week
before he was killed by a U.S. airstrike, Zarqawi echoed Tartusi's
claims. In an audio message posted on the Internet, he accused
Hezbollah of serving as Israel's security wall against Sunni
militants, and, even more bizarrely, he parroted U.S. demands that
Hezbollah be disarmed.

On July 21, nine days after his forces kidnapped the two Israeli
soldiers, Nasrallah answered Zarqawi and Tartusi. Looking relaxed and
reasonable, in a carefully staged interview with Al Jazeera, he
mentioned Zarqawi's statement. "Today, we are Shia fighting Israel,"
he pointed out, in a peroration not unlike the one he made the day his
son died. "Our fighting and steadfastness is a victory to our brothers
in Palestine, who are Sunnis, not Shia. So, we, Shia and Sunnis, are
fighting together against Israel, which is supported, backed, and made
powerful by America." In a brilliant inversion of Tartusi's logic,
Nasrallah even suggested that "some Arabs" were collaborating with
Israel to smash the resistance in Lebanon.

Hardcore Sunni jihadists, especially those who congregate online, will
probably continue to distrust Nasrallah and all Shia. But, closer to
the Islamist mainstream, powerful and popular Islamist groups like the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood have come out strongly in support of
Hezbollah. On Al Jazeera, the Brotherhood's leader, Mahdi Akef, hailed
Nasrallah, saying that "the Lebanese who kidnapped the Zionist
soldiers are true nationalists, led by a great man."

What do the Shia, his main constituency, really think of Nasrallah and
his war? Among the religious majority, especially the moderates who
follow Lebanese Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah instead of
sterner Iranian and Iraqi mullahs, Nasrallah is adored and respected,
an emblem of Islam and Arab pride. According to the independent
Lebanese pollster Abdo Saad, people have begun referring to him as the
"shadow of God."

But not all Shia are happy. In fact, secular Shia are outraged.
Lebanon's Shia merchant class, like all the country's bourgeoisie, has
been devastated by the current conflict. And even some of the devout
are privately expressing doubts about Nasrallah's promise to rebuild
their decimated villages and neighborhoods with the help of a new
"friend"--i.e., Iran. "People are sleeping on the ground, and
Nasrallah doesn't care," mutters Umm Hussein, a devout Shia woman from
Beirut who says she has never criticized the sayyid before. "He said
he was going to make Lebanon like it was before. Is he going to bring
back the people who died?"

But, in the end, Hezbollah may not care that much about local public
opinion. "Of course they're not happy that people are dying," says
Saad-Ghorayeb. "But I don't think that public opinion is all that
important to them, especially not now."

What matters far more than Nasrallah's eventual victory or defeat is
the iconography he has created: that of an Arab leader who, unlike all
the others, isn't afraid to defend the umma. In just a few weeks, he
has succeeded in exporting the Shia jihad--a goal that even mighty
Iran has failed to achieve in three decades of trying. "This is not
just a war about survival and borders--not so far even a strategic
one," says Saad-Ghorayeb. "This is the decisive battle for the region.
... If he succeeds, then it will reverberate throughout the region."
And, if he loses, it may reverberate just the same--and just as
violently.

Annia Ciezadlo is a Beirut-based writer.

http://www.alternet.org/story/39715/
Israel's Wall of Horrors

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig. Posted August 1, 2006.


Israel's security wall has ripped a mortal gash in the lives of Palestinians living in its shadow. Tools

The rage and extremism of the Islamic militants in Lebanon and the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza appear incomprehensible to the outside world. The wanton murder, the raw anti-Semitism, the callous disregard for human life, including the lives of children and other innocents, permit those on the outside to thrust these militant fighters in another moral universe, to certify them as incomprehensible.

But this branding of these militants as something less than human, as something that reasonable people cannot hope to understand, is possible only because we have ignored and disregarded the decades of repression, the crushing weight of occupation, the abject humiliation and violence, unleashed on Lebanese and Palestinians by Israel because of our silence and indifference. It is the Israeli penchant for violence and occupation that slowly created and formed these frightening groups.

The failure by the outside world to react to the years of brutal repression, the refusal by the United States to intercede on behalf of the occupied Lebanese and Palestinians, gradually formed and galvanized the radicals who now occupy the stage with Israel, answering death for death, atrocity for atrocity.

Those inside these zones of occupation pleaded over the years for help. We refused to listen. And once they burst through these barriers, enraged, bloodied, bent on revenge, we recoiled in horror, unable to see our complicity. We asked them to be quiet, to be reasonable, to calm down, and when they did not, their blood heated by years of abuse and neglect, we condemned them to their fate.

The barrier built by Israel in the West Bank is one of the most tangible and important symbols of this long humiliation, this strangulation of the Palestinians by Israel. To understand the role of this barrier is to begin to understand the rage it has now unleashed. Understanding is not excusing, but until we grasp that these militants do not come from another moral universe, until we face our own complicity in their creation and the awful violence now underway in Lebanon and the occupied territories, we cannot begin to understand the gross injustices that fuel these militant movements. It was, after all, the $10 billion in loan guarantees by the United States that made this barrier possible.

Ending the loan guarantees, as long as they were used to build settlements and seize even more Palestinian land, would have done more to blunt the rage and violence of militants than all the iron fragmentation bombs Israel has dropped on the hapless civilians in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.

But we react too late. We react to the manifestation of rage rather than the cause of rage. We are as morally compromised as those we condemn, as in