ITS credibility badly undermined, Israel yesterday sought desperately to defend itself against a growing chorus of accusations over the shelling last month of a United Nations base in southern Lebanon, during which more than 100 Lebanese civilians were killed.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, out on the campaign trail for the general election on May 29th, insisted vehemently that Israel had no prior information that civilians had taken refuge at the base. He said charges that Israel had deliberately targeted civilians were "unfounded".
Israel dispatched a senior army officer for urgent talks at UN headquarters in New York, in the hope of persuading UN officials finalising a report on the tragedy that their preliminary conclusions which reportedly accuse Israel of intentionally firing on the base are mistaken.
The UN report is being compiled at the request of the Secretary General, Dr Boutros Boutros Ghali, by Gen Frank van Kappen of the Netherlands, who visited the area last week. He is said to have been convinced that Israel knew exactly whom it was firing on because it had deployed a remote controlled reconnaissance drone over the base.
Israel initially denied having a drone in the vicinity, but changed its story after a UN soldier's amateur video footage of the drone in flight was widely broadcast. Israel now confirms that a drone was sent up, but insists that it did not fly directly over the base, that it was only dispatched after the shelling, and that it was not in any case equipped with sufficiently sophisticated camera equipment to see into the buildings where the civilians were sheltering.
Israel says its last film of the camp prior to the shelling was taken two days earlier, and showed no signs of civilian refugees.
The attack on the UN base at the village of Qana took place on April 18th, at the height of Israel's 16 day assault on south Lebanon. According to the Israelis, several of their soldiers came under Hizbullah fire in the Qana area and, with their lives deemed at risk, retaliatory fire was ordered. Low cloud prevented the use of highly accurate fighter jets or helicopter gun ships, so artillery fire was used instead.
Some 30 shells were fired over a nine minute period at the source of the Hizbullah fire, according to the Israeli army, and two or three of them strayed off course and into the Qana base, killing some 100 civilians who were sheltering there.
The Israeli army has admitted that mistakes were made in calculating the line of fire of its shells, and also says it erred in gauging the distance between the base and the source of the Hizbullah mortar fire.
Had it done its sums properly, Israeli army spokesmen say, it would not have risked returning fire so close to a long established UN position. But Israel is also blaming Unifil, the UN force in Lebanon, for refusing its earlier requests for information on which bases Lebanese civilians were using for shelter, and for allowing Hizbullah gunmen to fire on Israeli targets from UN controlled areas.
The UN spokesman in south Lebanon, Mr Timor Goksel, retorted yesterday that, while Israel may not have known for sure that civilians were taking refuge at Qana, it did know that several thousand Lebanese were sheltering in the various UN bases, and it had "no licence to shell a UN base".
Hizbullah spokesmen have threatened to retaliate for the Qana shelling by striking at Israeli soldiers deployed in the "security zone" which Israel maintains in southern Lebanon.
Hizbullah, in common with state newspapers in Syria, has termed the Qana assault a war crime, and called for Israel's leaders to be put on trial.
Mr Peres repeated yesterday that the killings were "a mistake" for which he was "terribly sorry". The Israeli army has carried out its own investigation into the shelling, and decided not to take disciplinary action against any of the troops involved.
