Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert tried to repair his frayed standing as a war leader on Monday by claiming his troops had inflicted lasting damage on Hezbollah and would continue to pursue the militia’s leaders, despite a United Nations ceasefire.
Olmert was defending his conduct during the war at a special session of Parliament, called at a time of deepening public doubts over his leadership. He took full responsibility for the conflict, and admitted there were ”deficiencies” in the way it had been managed.
He was speaking after a day in which a UN-brokered truce had mostly held, triggering a mass return by refugees to south Lebanon.
A few skirmishes broke out between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters left in close proximity when the truce began on Monday morning. Israel claimed to have killed six Hezbollah guerrillas.
But the skirmishes did not escalate into wider fighting. In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Hezbollah fired at least 10 katyusha rockets into southern Lebanon, although there were no reports of injuries. Despite the ceasefire, Hezbollah has said it will still attack Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. The Israeli army said that, as none of the rockets crossed the border, it had not responded.
Ignoring Israeli warnings not to travel, thousands of displaced residents from south Lebanon clogged the roads on their way home as Hezbollah distributed glossy leaflets, labelled ”Divine victory”, showing fighters by a rocket launcher.
Olmert’s victory claim was more nuanced. He told the Knesset that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had crippled Hezbollah’s capacity to fight and that the militia would no longer be able to act like a ”state within a state as an arm of the axis of evil”. He said the ”strategic balance” in the region had shifted against Hezbollah.
His speech was interrupted by heckling from three Knesset members who were removed from the chamber. Olmert’s popularity was dented in the last week of the war, as IDF generals privately complained he had held them back for a month before unleashing a full invasion.
In Washington, President George Bush expressed optimism that the ceasefire would hold and he rejected Hezbollah’s claim of victory. ”Hezbollah started the crisis. And Hezbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis,” he said, adding that Iran and Syria provided the group with support. ”How can you claim victory when, at one time, you were a state within a state, safe within southern Lebanon, and now you’re going to be replaced by a Lebanese army and an international force?” Bush said.
CBS television had earlier broadcast an interview with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in which he defended Hezbollah’s actions. ”Hezbollah is a popular organisation in Lebanon, and they are defending their land,” he said. ”What I’m saying is that the killing of innocents is reprehensible. And … the displacement of people and making them refugees, again, is reprehensible. Lebanon is defending its independence. We are not at all happy with war. That is why on the first day we condemned this recent conflict. And we asked for an immediate ceasefire.”
Olmert’s principal rival on the right, the Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu, said there had been ”very many shortcomings” in Israel’s war readiness and the conduct of the fighting, echoing popular opinion that a full-scale ground invasion should have been ordered earlier.
Netanyahu also used the occasion to attack the government’s policy of unilaterally withdrawing from the West Bank. He said the experience in Lebanon, from where Israel withdrew six years ago, showed that the policy gave the country’s enemies ”a tactical advantage”.
The Olmert government has promised an inquiry into the lead-up to the war and its conduct. ”We won’t sweep things under the carpet,” Olmert said, but he warned his country against becoming engulfed in internal disputes, and to be vigilant against future attacks. Hezbollah’s leaders would not be able to rest, he said. ”We will continue to pursue them everywhere and at all times. We have no intention of asking anyone’s permission.”
Israel kept up its psychological offensive on Tuesday, dropping leaflets on Lebanese cities claiming Hezbollah and its Syrian and Iranian backers had brought destruction on Lebanon. ”Will you be able to pay this price again?” the leaflets asked.
Israeli and Lebanese army officers held preliminary talks with the UN monitoring force about the proposed replacement of Israeli troops by Lebanese government soldiers backed up by UN reinforcements. Talks on the UN mandate were under way in New York on Tuesday, but the reinforcements are not likely to arrive for at least 10 days. In the interim, the maintenance of the truce will depend on Israel and Hezbollah.
Nasrallah taunts Israel
Meanwhile, the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on Monday taunted Israeli soldiers as ”cowards” and claimed a ”strategic and historic victory”.
”We are today before a strategic, historic victory, without exaggeration,” said the black-turbaned cleric in a taped speech broadcast on Manar television, the Hezbollah propaganda station that Israeli bombers failed to shut down despite repeated attempts.
The Israeli destruction demonstrated its ”failure and impotency” and his guerrillas would help rebuild houses destroyed in the bombardment, he said.
The triumphant tone appeared to signal that the leader would accept the tentative peace settlement with Israel despite apparent misgivings in recent days.
On Sunday, Hezbollah officials boycotted a meeting of the Lebanese Cabinet that was due to implement plans for transferring control of pockets of southern Lebanon from Israel to a force of 15 000 Lebanese and 15 000 international soldiers due to deploy soon. And on Monday night, Nasrallah said he believes the Lebanese-Western force would be ”incapable of protecting Lebanon”.
Calls for a debate on disarming Hezbollah are ”inappropriate”, he said. ”This is the wrong time on the psychological and moral level particularly before a [full] ceasefire.”
Hezbollah fighters echoed their leader’s victorious mood despite the massive destruction and heavy casualties. ”Of course this is a victory, praise be to God. What is important is our dignity,” said one, who only gave his name as Hajj. ”Israel used everything it had at us, and we threw it all back.”
Four other fighters travelling with him in a shell-blasted jeep refused to speak. Asked if he would fire rockets into Israel again, Hajj answered: ”If we received the order, we will do it.”
Two hours after the ceasefire deadline, Hezbollah fighters started to emerge into the square in Khiam, a town near the disputed Shebaa Farms area. Standing at the corner of a street, they hugged and kissed each other as all around them were scenes of destruction and mayhem.
”They bombed everywhere for days,” said one man, his T-shirt and hair covered in dust. Next to him lay a car smashed and twisted; everywhere around him buildings were destroyed. There were piles of rubble in the streets and cables hanging from electricity poles on the ground.
Then the injured started to emerge. Three fighters carried an old woman on a stretcher to a waiting Red Cross car. Another stretcher took an injured fighter, bandages covering part of his face and chest, while another limped along supported by a colleague.
”The fighters are being taken to the hospital, tell the Red Cross not to do anything with them, just first aid, and our guys will pick them up later,” said a man on the phone as the ambulances left.
”I haven’t had food since last Thursday; we had some chocolate bars, we had a chunk in the morning and another chunk at night,” said one of the men.
”They bombed us very hard,” another fighter added. ”You get scared after hearing all the bombs and shelling. Sometimes we lost our nerve.” — Guardian Unlimited Â