An Israeli cabinet meeting yesterday opted to step up air and artillery bombardments on southern Lebanon while limiting future ground incursions. It will nonetheless call up thousands of reservists and press its offensive against Hizbullah in Lebanon until the guerrillas are crippled or the order is given to stop, its military chief said yesterday. Lara Marlowe reportes from Beirut.
Lieut Gen Dan Halutz said the damage already inflicted on Hizbullah during the Jewish state's 16-day-old offensive was "huge". Up to three divisions of reserve soldiers would be ordered to report for duty, he added. That could amount to around 15,000 soldiers, or 5,000 troops per division.
The decision appears to be the result of events on Wednesday, when Israel lost nine soldiers in the southern town of Bint Jbeil, a stronghold of the pro-Iranian Shia Muslim militia Hizbullah.
The failure of Wednesday's international crisis meeting on Lebanon in Rome also appears to have encouraged Israel to harden its position. "Yesterday in Rome, we in fact got the authorisation to continue our operations until Hizbullah is disarmed and is no longer present in southern Lebanon," said Israeli minister for justice Haïm Ramon.
The UN Security Council adopted a statement yesterday expressing shock and distress at Israel's bombing of a UN outpost in Lebanon that killed four unarmed UN peacekeepers.
The policy statement, which carries less weight than a resolution, was weaker than one proposed by China and other nations, after more than a day of negotiations and objections from the US which wanted to make sure Israel was not directly blamed for the attack.
The final draft adopted by the 15-member council eliminated wording "condemning any deliberate attack against UN personnel" as well as a call for a joint Israeli-UN investigation, which UN secretary general Kofi Annan had asked for.
Instead, it called on Israel "to conduct a comprehensive inquiry into this incident, taking into account any relevant material from UN authorities."
Meanwhile, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second in command in al-Qaeda, called on Muslims not to "stand idly by" but join the war against "Crusaders and Zionists". Zawahiri's remarks, in a videotape released yesterday, raised the spectre of conflict beyond the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.
Israeli radio quoted a minister who is a member of the national security council saying: "If need be, we must raze the villages of southern Lebanon. The Israeli army is a long way from having won, and we have to change the rules of the game."
While Israeli justice minister Mr Ramon said that "anyone still in southern Lebanon is linked to Hizbullah.".
Lebanese minister for health Dr Mohammed Jawad Khalifa yesterday announced that up to 600 Lebanese had been killed in Israeli attacks since July 12th; 401 bodies have been taken to morgues, and up to 200 others are believed to be buried in rubble or inaccessible because of bombardments.
Hizbullah says it has lost 30 fighters; the other Shia group, Amal, has lost 15. Reuters reported that 18 of the 51 Israelis killed were civilians. At Blida, near Bint Jbeil in Lebanon, the International Committee of the Red Cross found 700 people sheltering in a mosque.
The diplomatic divide between the US and Israel on one hand and the UN and some Europeans demanding a ceasefire on the other continues to deepen.
France is again leading calls for restraint, as it did before the 2003 Iraq war. But Washington has made it clear it wants a ceasefire only on Israel's terms.