Israel will pursue its war on Hezbollah with more military incursions into south Lebanon but will not unleash a full-scale invasion for the moment, an Israeli army spokesperson said on Saturday.
Thousands of Lebanese civilians have fled north fearing Israel will invade and expand an 11-day-old bombardment of Lebanon which has killed 345 people, mostly civilians.
Resisting international pressure for a ceasefire, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said before a trip to the region that the conflict’s root causes — in her view Hezbollah’s armed presence on Israel’s border and the role of its allies, Syria and Iran — had to be tackled first.
An army spokesperson said Israeli forces were making only limited thrusts a few kilometres into south Lebanon.
”It will probably widen, but we are still looking at limited operations,” he said. ”We’re not talking about massive forces going inside at this point.”
United Nations peacekeepers on the border said Israeli forces withdrew on Friday night from the village of Marwaheen, just inside Lebanon, but were still present further east in Maroun al-Ras, scene of fierce fighting earlier this week.
”They entered these areas two or three days ago, so they have now been in Maroun al-Ras for 72 hours,” UNIFIL spokesperson Milos Strugar said.
Israel has been building up its forces at the border and has called up 3 000 reserves. Defence Minister Amir Peretz has talked of a possible land offensive to halt rocket attacks that have killed 15 Israeli civilians in the past 11 days.
But Israel is wary of mounting another invasion, only six years after it ended a costly 22-year occupation of the south. It has already lost 19 soldiers dead in the latest conflict.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said an Israeli ground invasion would mark a ”very serious escalation” of the conflict.
”If they stay and intend to establish what they have called, in the past, a security zone … it will be a security zone for them, but for the others will be occupation and that will intensify the resistance,” Annan told CNN.
Witnesses said Israeli warplanes launched repeated raids on the town of al-Khiam, just north of the border. They also struck intermittently near the port of Tyre, and destroyed five trucks in eastern Lebanon.
Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel from fields around the southern town of Marjayoun, witnesses said. Israeli medics and the army said at least 10 rockets hit towns across northern Israel, injuring 10 people and damaging two houses.
Outrageous provocation
The war started when Hezbollah captured two soldiers and killed eight in a July 12 raid into Israel, which had already launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip to try to recover another soldier seized by Palestinian militants on June 25.
Calling Hezbollah’s action an ”outrageous provocation”, Rice said on Friday she would visit the region early next week in search of a durable peace deal.
”What I won’t do is … try to get a ceasefire that I know isn’t going to last,” she said.
Washington supported proposals for an expanded international force on the Israel-Lebanon border but details were not fixed, a senior US official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. A 2 000-strong UN force monitors the border at present.
Israel’s military chief, Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz, said nearly 100 Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the offensive, far more than the half-dozen deaths announced by the group.
The United States is rushing precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after its air campaign in Lebanon began, The New York Times reported.
Across south Lebanon, families packed into cars and pickup trucks — flying white sheets they hoped would protect them from attack — and clogged roads to the north after Israeli planes dropped leaflets on Friday warning residents to flee for safety beyond the Litani river, about 20km from the border.
Amid growing concern about the plight of civilians in Lebanon, Israel said it would ease humanitarian access.
UN relief agencies have called for safe passage to take food and medical supplies to tens of thousands who have fled their homes. Lebanese government and UN estimates put the number of displaced at 500 000.
Foreigners have also flooded out of the country. Ships and aircraft worked through the night scooping more tired and scared people from Lebanon and taking them to Cyprus and Turkey.
Destruction of the Lebanese state
Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy called on Saturday for an immediate cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, saying their conflict risked destroying the Lebanese state. ”We must note the severity of the situation … and call for humanitarian corridors, call for the immediate cessation of hostilities and find all the conditions for a ceasefire,” Douste-Blazy told a news conference in the Egyptian capital.
”If not, it will be the destruction of the Lebanese state.”
”We believe the spiral of violence will not lead to anything durable. Only political dialogue can lead to a durable solution,” said Douste-Blazy, speaking after meeting Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit.
France, which has close ties to Lebanon, its former colony, has called the Israeli bombardment a ”disproportionate” reaction to the capture of the Israeli soldiers but has also called for Hezbollah to be disarmed. – Reuters