As Israel yesterday buried two of the three soldiers killed in a Hizbullah missile attack in south Lebanon on Monday, the government of Mr Ehud Barak was poised uncertainly between restraint and retaliation, with Israeli-Syrian peace hopes hanging in the balance.
Israel's army chief-of-staff, Gen. Shaul Mofaz, made no secret of the fact that he and his fellow generals had "recommended various courses of action" in response to Hizbullah attacks that saw the three deaths on Monday, a fourth soldier killed earlier in the month, and the second-in-command of Israel's South Lebanon Army allies assassinated outside his home on Sunday.
Although Brig Gen. Mofaz declined to elaborate, memories of a massive Israeli bombardment of Lebanon last June, including attacks on bridges, power stations and other infrastructure, are still fresh.
But Mr Barak, who also holds the post of Minister of Defence, has so far chosen to reject his army's call for decisive retaliation. Instead, in what amounted to a plea to Syria's President Hafez al-Assad, he urged Damascus to "do more" to rein in Hizbullah, a pro-Iranian guerrilla force that gets its weapons from Iran via Damascus Airport, and is fighting to force Israel to withdraw from its "security zone" in southern Lebanon.
To the further frustration of more hawkish critics, Mr Barak also declined to condition explicitly further peace talks with Syria on a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Israeli-Syrian talks are currently stalled, and Mr Barak has said that Israel can hardly go back to the peace table if Damascus is simultaneously giving Hizbullah free rein. But the Prime Minister, who yesterday toured the border area and visited soldiers hospitalised in the recent clashes, indicated that these comments were intended to encourage Syria to restore calm, rather than as a threat.
His attempts to stress such subtle nuances indicate that the normally decisive Mr Barak is currently on the horns of a fairly complex dilemma. He repeatedly pledges to withdraw the army from south Lebanon by July, and is desperate to resume peace talks with Syria; hence his desire to refrain from an intensive assault against Hizbullah now.
At the same time Israeli losses are mounting, the army and the SLA are frustrated by the sense that they are sitting ducks, and President Assad, who is insisting on a public Israeli promise to withdraw from the Golan Heights as his precondition for more peace talks, seems disinclined to intervene. Indeed, Syria's position is that Hizbullah is legitimately resisting Israel's occupation of south Lebanon.
US diplomats have also been passing word to Mr Assad that the ongoing Hizbullah violence is a "mortal blow" to peace hopes. "If Assad does not get the message verbally," said Mr Ephraim Sneh, Mr Barak's Deputy Defence Minister, last night, "he'll get the message another way."
Mr Barak will meet King Abdullah of Jordan in Amman on Sunday for talks on the Middle East peace process, his office said yesterday.
The meeting follows talks Mr Barak had in Cairo with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt last Sunday and a summit he plans to hold with the Palestinian President, Mr Yasser Arafat, tomorrow.