For 24 hours Israel has bombed Lebanon in a staggering show of force unseen across the border for at least 10 years, evoking memories of the long and bloody occupation of its northern neighbour.
”War,” screamed the front-page headline in Israel’s best-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper. ”Declaration of War” shrieked its rival, Maariv.
Israel’s furious assault on Lebanon, which saw Beirut’s international airport bombed and more than three dozen civilians killed, came after two soldiers were snatched by Hezbollah guerrillas and another eight killed.
The death of a first Israeli civilian on Thursday, a middle-aged woman, and the injuries of at least another 14 Israelis, only served to heighten tensions and underscore the government’s intention to smash the Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government gave the green light to ”harsh and aggressive” military action in Lebanon at a late-night emergency meeting on Wednesday.
And in the early hours of Thursday, Israeli warplanes bombed Beirut’s international airport and Hezbollah and infrastructure targets across the south of the country, killing at least 39 civilians.
Israel also imposed an air, sea and land blockade on the country after the air raids closed Beirut airport, and sent warships into Lebanese waters to restrict access to ports that the military claimed were being used by ”terrorists”.
Military and political officials say the primary objective is to push Hezbollah as far away from the border with Israel and to attack ”strategic installations” in Lebanon.
The violence is the worst since Israel launched its Grapes of Wrath operation against Lebanon in 1996 and comes six years after it pulled out its troops from the south of the country in May 2006.
Defence Minister Amir Peretz vowed the Hezbollah guerrillas would be pushed back from their strongholds on the border with Israel, where the service officers were abducted.
And Olmert has made clear he wants to exert maximum pressure on the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah in keeping with a United Nations resolution, which stipulates that all militias in Lebanon be dismantled.
”The Lebanese government is responsible. Lebanon will pay the price,” he said, branding the militia attack nothing less than ”an act of war”.
”The rules of the game have changed,” waded in Justice Minister Haim Ramon, accusing Beirut of allowing Hezbollah to ”become its official army” since Israeli troops left Lebanon.
”The state of Israel has found itself embroiled in a situation it has never known before: fighting the war on terror on three separate fronts,” wrote editorialist Alex Fishman in Yediot.
The operation is ”reminiscent of Operation Grapes of Wrath — only its dimensions and the concentration of fire are larger”, he said, referring to the 1996 Israeli operation in Lebanon in which about 160 people were killed.
The combined air, sea and ground assault in a bid to retrieve the two soldiers also evoked memories of Israel’s disastrous 1982 fullscale invasion of Lebanon where soldiers were caught in a deadly quagmire.
Observers pointed to the natural advantage enjoyed by guerrilla fighters over regular Israel soldiers, despite the Jewish state’s overwhelming military dominance.
Yediot warned that the ”plot” woven by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah ”has entangled Israel in an intolerably difficult strategic situation”.
Maariv compared Nasrallah to Adolf Hitler, the man who exterminated six million Jews in the Holocaust, leaving Israel with ”one choice: To respond with might, in one fell swoop, unless it does not wish to live”.
Writing in Yediot, Sever Plotzker demanded absolute victory over Hezbollah and Hamas, whose militants snatched another soldier last month, sparking an offensive in Gaza, even if it ”releases demons across the entire Middle East”.
Others warned against sliding ever deeper into a war that could span three fronts, raising the spectre of conflict with Israel’s arch foe and Hezbollah sponsor Syria.
”Israel faces the danger of a third front if Syria steps in to assist Hezbollah. Strategically, Israel faces an extreme foursome: Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran,” the liberal Haaretz newspaper said.
”A strong blow to the Syrians — which could deteriorate into war — will not be accepted by the world, for the time being,” cautioned Yediot. — AFP
