http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/world/eu...artner=homepage
Israel Debates Strategy Shift After Truce Talks Fail

By GREG MYRE and JOHN O’NEIL
Published: July 27, 2006
JERUSALEM, July 27 — Israel’s security cabinet today decided against expanding its ground offensive in Lebanon, a day after the heaviest fighting in the two-week-old conflict killed 9 Israeli soldiers and dozens of Hezbollah fighters.

Before the meeting, Israeli officials said they regarded the failure of an international conference to reach agreement on a cease-fire plan as clearing the way for further assaults on Hezbollah.

“We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world,’’ Justice Minister Haim Ramon told Israeli radio, “to continue this operation, this war, until Hezbollah won’t be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed.’’

Mr. Ramon also raised the possibility of an expanded air assault, saying “all those now in south Lebanon are terrorists who are related in some way to Hezbollah.’’

The fierce fighting in southern Lebanon and rising Israeli casualties led a number of politicians to call today for an expansion of the ground assault. But after meeting this afternoon, the cabinet decided to stick with the limited campaign already underway, officials said.

On the diplomatic front, France’s foreign minister, Phillipe Douste-Blazy, today proposed a United Nations resolution for a settlement, Reuters reported. It called for the release of two soldiers seized by Hezbollah, the disarmament of the militant group and the creation of a buffer zone along the border, the release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel, the deployment of the Lebanese army in the buffer zone and guarantees of respect for Lebanese sovereignty.

Arriving today in Kuala Lumpur for a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended her resistance during the Rome conference to the push for a quick cease-fire. She said she was “willing and ready to go back to the Middle East at any time’’ for talks on a “sustainable’’ peace plan, The Associated Press reported, but warned against expecting any rapid solution.

Arab governments and newspapers expressed disappointment at the outcome of the Rome conference. Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Abul Gheit, said the meeting had “failed to meet Arab demands’’ for a cease-fire, Agence France-Presse reported. The Saudi daily Okaz criticized the “major powers’’ for delaying a cease-fire by insisting on “conditions that will allow the aggression to continue,’’ according to Reuters.

Also today, Ayman al-Zawarhiri, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, vowed in a videotape released today that the group “will not stay silent with regard to what is happening to Muslims in Palestine and Lebanon.”

"What is happening to Muslims is a Crusader and Zionist war," Mr. Zawarhiri said, promising “we will attack everywhere’’ in response.

Meanwhile, Israeli air assaults continued today, destroying radio towers north of Beirut and targets in south Lebanon, Reuters reported. It quoted Lebanese security officials who said that Israeli warplanes struck a convoy carrying food and medical supplies from Syria, killing two truck drivers. Agence France-Presse said that nine people were killed in new air strikes, including a gendarme and a Nigerian domestic worker hit by an Israeli missile while riding his motorbike near the southern city of Tyre.

Reuters quoted Israeli security officials who said that a rocket fired by Hezbollah struck a chemical factory in a northern town, but there was no immediate information on casualties.

In Gaza, three Palestinians were killed today, Reuters reported. At least 23 Palestinians had died in fighting there on Wednesday.

A trickle of relief aid continued to make its way into Lebanon, as a second airlift of medical supplies landed in Beirut, news services said. On Wednesday, relief aid reached the southern city of Tyre,, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. In an update on its Web site it painted a grim picture of conditions in villages near the fighting. In one village, it said, “about 700 people, among them 300 children, had taken shelter in a mosque. In other isolated villages, the streets remained empty. As people were afraid to go out, fearing bombardments, dead bodies had not been removed from the streets and others were still buried under rubble.’’

Hezbollah on Thursday kept up its sustained fire on northern Israel, with 130 rockets hitting the region, wounding more than 10 Israelis.

The death toll has been at least 433 in Lebanon and 51 in Israel, according to Reuters.

The death toll on Wednesday was Israel’s highest since fighting began on July 12 after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during a raid into Israel.

The most intense ground combat came around the hilltop town of Bint Jbail, a Hezbollah stronghold just a few miles from the Israeli border.

During the meeting in Rome, while the other nations pressed for an immediate cease-fire, the United States argued for a “sustainable cease-fire,” with the Lebanese government regaining sovereignty over southern Lebanon, and militias like Hezbollah being disbanded.

The lack of action prompted Prime Minister Fouad Siniora of Lebanon to lash out with a cry of despair.

“Is the value of human life less in Lebanon than that of citizens elsewhere?” he asked. “Are we children of a lesser god? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?”

Accusing Israel of “barbaric destruction,” he vowed to seek justice, announcing that Lebanon would begin legal proceedings for war reparations.

European and Arab governments, as well as Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, and Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, lined up behind him and pushed hard for an immediate cessation of hostilities or even a truce on humanitarian grounds, several participants said.

But in a tense, sometimes stormy debate that went on for nearly an hour, Ms. Rice dug in, and prevailed.

Later, she defended the United States’ refusal to call for an immediate cease-fire, saying: “It doesn’t do anyone any good to raise false hopes about something that’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. I did say to the group, ‘When will we learn?’ The fields of the Middle East are littered with broken cease-fires.”

She said she expected that the issue would end up being resolved by the United Nations Security Council.

In a news conference after the talks, the normally placid Mr. Annan made no effort to control his rage at Israel for what he had called an “apparently deliberate targeting” of a United Nations observer post in southern Lebanon by Israel on Tuesday. Four observers were killed.

“Mr. Olmert definitely believes it was a mistake,” said Mr. Annan, referring to Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert. But despite at least 10 calls from United Nations personnel to Israel that their positions were being shelled, Mr. Annan added, “The shelling of the U.N. positions began early in the morning and carried on all day.”

He pledged a formal investigation.

Ms. Rice and Mr. Annan disagreed at the news conference on whether Syria and Iran should be brought into the effort to end the violence. Mr. Annan called for working “with the countries of the region to find a solution,” naming Iran and Syria as players; Ms. Rice, by contrast, said she was concerned about Iran’s role and calling on Syria to live up to its responsibilities, a reference to previous United Nations resolutions.

While the world has focused on the fighting in Lebanon, Israel has continued to shell Gaza. Most of those killed in Gaza on Wednesday were militants, but a mother and her two young daughters died when an artillery shell hit their home, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. A third young girl was also killed, and dozens of Palestinians were wounded.

In its campaign, which began as an effort to halt rocket attacks and intensified after Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier last month, Israel has hit homes in residential areas where it believes weapons are stored, causing civilian casualties in some cases.

Israel says it has dropped leaflets, and even made phone calls to families in the area, warning them that they should leave because militants are operating in the area and that the Israeli military could carry out operations.

In southern Lebanon, Israel’s initial talk of breaking Hezbollah’s back has slowly given way to more limited goals as Israeli ground troops have bogged down just a few miles into the country. The latest talk is of creating a buffer zone just two kilometers, or about 1.2 miles, wide, which Israel said it could police from its side of the border.

“You can create a buffer zone, not only by being there, but by going in and out,” said Maj. Gen. Benny Gantz, who is in charge the Israeli military’s ground forces.

Prime Minister Olmert briefed an Israeli parliamentary committee Wednesday on plans for the zone, according to participants in the closed session.

A senior Israeli official who spoke about the plan Tuesday said ground troops would be used in the zone. But Mr. Olmert suggested that Israel would try to keep order from its side of the border with artillery and airstrikes.

The plan is already coming under criticism, as has the slow military progress on the ground. Yuval Steinitz, a member of the committee on defense and foreign affairs, which met with Mr. Olmert, described the government’s plan as half-baked.

“If we want to achieve something with this operation, then we need to conduct massive ground operations and clear out all of southern Lebanon,” he said.

Two days ago, Israeli military officials on the border confidently announced that first the village of Marun al-Ras and then the larger town of Bint Jbail had been subdued. But renewed fighting erupted in the region around daybreak Wednesday, and by afternoon military officers were being more circumspect about their progress.

In the village of Marun al-Ras, one Israeli soldier was killed and three more were wounded Wednesday, the Israeli military said. Hezbollah fighters fired an anti-tank rocket that hit the soldiers in a building, it said.

When asked what the Israeli military had achieved after two weeks of fighting, General Gantz replied: “I would suggest asking what Hezbollah has achieved. They came as defenders of Lebanon but basically have destroyed the country.”

General Gantz, a lean, graying man who is famous for having been the last Israeli to leave southern Lebanon in the pullout six years ago after the country’s 18-year presence there, insisted that the fight, though long, would ultimately go Israel’s way. Yet he showed glimmers of frustration with the political pressures that are shaping the battle plan.

When asked if he thought Israel’s response to the initial Hezbollah raid was disproportionate, as many critics have charged, he minced no words. “I don’t think it was disproportionate,” he said. “It should have been much stronger, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

He added, “We have a long way to go and a lot to achieve,” though he would not talk about how many villages needed to be cleared of Hezbollah fighters. Israeli Army officers are saying that it is probably unrealistic to expect that the military can wipe out Hezbollah’s well-hidden and widespread arsenal, which was believed to have contained more than 10,000 missiles when the fighting began.

General Gantz conceded that it would be difficult to stop the rockets that have menaced northern Israel with purely military means, noting that the launchers are mobile and easily hidden and can be fired remotely or with timers.

Another officer, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press, noted that even if Israel managed to destroy 50 or 60 percent of those rockets, there would still be enough left to keep up the current pace of roughly 100 rockets a day for weeks.

“All Hezbollah has to do to win, is not lose,” another officer said.