A United Nations ceasefire initiative for Lebanon ran into almost immediate trouble on Sunday night after it was rejected by key Arab countries and provoked Hezbollah’s deadliest strike on Israel so far.
Hours after the draft Security Council ceasefire resolution was published, the United States Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, also issued a sobering warning that she expected fighting to continue once the text was formally adopted on Monday or Tuesday.
The prediction came as Lebanon and Hezbollah dismissed the deal and Israel, Syria and Iran embarked on a fresh war of words highlighting the potential for the war to turn into a regional conflict.
Within 24 hours of the draft being agreed, Hezbollah launched a rocket barrage that killed 12 Israeli soldiers. They followed up with the heaviest attack yet on the port city of Haifa, with a volley of missiles flattening buildings and pulling down electrical lines. Three were killed and at least 120 injured. Israel responded stepping up its aerial bombardment, with the port of Tyre bearing the brunt.
Rice, speaking at US President’s George Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, said she hoped the resolution would reduce violence but warned that no single resolution was going to bring peace overnight. ”These things take a while to wind down,” she said. ”It is certainly not the case that probably all violence is going to stop.”
A British Foreign Office source echoed Rice, saying: ”No one is naive enough to think there will be peace once the resolution is rubber-stamped by the Security Council.”
The draft resolution was agreed between the US, Israel’s biggest backer, and France, the former colonial power in Lebanon, at the UN headquarters in New York on Saturday. All 15 members of the council on Sunday night discussed the draft, which calls for ”a full cessation of hostilities”.
Lebanon, through Qatar, which has a seat on the council, tried unsuccessfully to change the draft, calling for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops rather than having them remain in the country until a UN-backed international force is put in place. The draft allows Israel to continue ”defensive operations” in Lebanon after a ceasefire.
Rice said the resolution would provide some clarity this week by showing who obeyed the ceasefire call. ”We’re going to know who really did want to stop the violence and who didn’t,” she said.
Lebanon and Hezbollah said the draft offered no timetable for an Israeli troop withdrawal. ”If Israel has not won the war, but still gets this, what would have happened had they won?” asked Nabih Berri, the speaker of the Lebanese Parliament negotiating on behalf of Hezbollah.
Israel said little in public on Sunday about the draft, but reports in the press suggested political leaders were happy with the result. Key parts of the agreement were seen to be in Israel’s favour.
One Israeli political source told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper: ”We got what we wanted. The meaning of the decision is that there is no black hole or quiet vacuum. Israel will leave only when someone comes to replace her.”
In the most explicit threat yet from Israel to Iran, Dan Gillerman, the ambassador to the UN, said in an interview with the BBC that an attack by Hezbollah on Tel Aviv would be tantamount to an ”act of war” and Hezbollah would not make such an attack without an explicit order from Iran. The implication of his words was that Israel would retaliate by attacking Tehran.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, said on Friday that any attack on the centre of Beirut would be met with a rocket attack Tel Aviv, which has so far escaped harm. He was speaking just days after Mohsen Rezai, secretary of Iran’s expediency council, said Israel should expect ”very difficult days in cities such as Tel Aviv” unless it ended the war.
Mark Regev, a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry, said: ”No one wants to see an expansion of the conflict. But there is no doubt that Hezbollah is the long arm of Iran, that the missiles landing in Israel are not Lebanese missiles, that the fortifications we are dealing with in Lebanon were built with somebody else’s money not Lebanese. The idea that Hezbollah is a tool of Iranian foreign policy is correct.”
Asked what Israel’s reaction would be to a rocket strike on Tel Aviv, he said: ”There is nothing I can say about that.”
Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran’s Foreign Minister, in an interview with The Guardian, described Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair as ”codefendants” in war crimes and claimed they had foreknowledge of Israeli plans to launch a ”campaign of aggression” in Lebanon which he claimed was part of a ”war on the whole Middle East”. But Iran did not fear an American attack, he said.
Syria, which also backs Hezbollah, rejected the draft resolution. Its Foreign Minister, Walid Moallem, normally one of the more moderate voices in Damascus said on a visit to Beirut that he personally was prepared to volunteer to fight with Hezbollah and described the draft as a ”recipe for continuation of the war”.
Blair is to remain at Downing Street on Monday delaying his holiday further in a bid to ensure the UN resolution is passed by Tuesday and the ground work is laid for a fresh UN resolution setting out the terms of a multinational force operating in Lebanon. The British Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, left for a carvanning holiday in France at the weekend but the Foreign Office said she would fly to New York if the presence of ministers was required to vote on the resolution. – Guardian Unlimited Â