--Independent (UK) story on Lebanon as prelude to attack on Iran, below--

15 Aug. 2006, Seattle Times news services

Will cease-fire endure? Tangled problems ahead

JERUSALEM — It could be weeks before an international force of 15,000 U.N.-sponsored peacekeepers, coupled with 15,000 Lebanese army troops, takes control of southern Lebanon in an effort to solidify the cease-fire taking hold between Israel and Hezbollah.
On both sides of a surprisingly quiet Israeli-Lebanese border, displaced masses yesterday attempted to return to their war-ravaged homes as the Hezbollah militia and the Israeli army generally held to a brittle cease-fire accord.
The Israeli army said today it planned to begin relinquishing parts of southern Lebanon to the Lebanese army on Wednesday, and hopes to complete the evacuation of its forces by next week.
U.N. officials also began coordinating with Israeli commanders the movement into the region of U.N. peacekeeping troops, which will include soldiers from Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and France.
Given Israel's intention to remain in strategic positions inside Lebanon until joint forces are deployed, and Hezbollah's intention to go on attacking Israeli forces until they leave Lebanon, can this truce endure?
Shlomo Avineri, a political-science professor at Hebrew University who has written on the instability of the Middle East, has his doubts, especially since small-scale but deadly clashes occurred just hours after Monday's deadline for the parties to silence their big guns.
But others say the toll of the conflict may be reason enough to stick to a cease-fire, even though it won't be easy.
The primary problem, Avineri said, is that the international community is trying to implement a cease-fire arrangement between a state, namely Israel, and "a non-state actor," namely Hezbollah.
Although Hezbollah "is working through the Lebanese government in one way or another," Avineri said, "the Lebanese government is not controlling Hezbollah's armed forces."
The Lebanese Cabinet's two Hezbollah ministers reportedly insisted the guerrillas will not disarm, and the Lebanese army says it won't deploy to the region while Hezbollah remains armed there. The U.N. peacekeepers, meanwhile, won't go until Lebanese troops replace Hezbollah fighters. "In that context, the sort of sanctions the U.N. could ordinarily bring to bear for noncompliance are more or less useless against a non-state actor," Avineri said.
Moreover, he says, the language of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which creates the international force, is dangerously vague.
"It is not clear about sequencing," about who should do what, and when, except to say that Israeli troops will withdraw "in parallel" with the deployment of the Lebanese and international forces, he said.
"It is not clear about who is going to implement the operative clauses regarding disarming Hezbollah. Is it going to be the Lebanese army? The international force? And who is commanding the operation?"
While Israel has agreed to suspend offensive operations, its new rules allow its soldiers to open fire on any Hezbollah fighter perceived as a danger, according to unnamed army officials quoted Monday in the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.
"If wounded men need to be evacuated, or if a pinned-down force needs to be rescued, commanders will also be able to call in helicopter fire, fighter jets and artillery," the paper's sources said.
The truce that took effect at 8 a.m. local time largely held through its first day, although six Hezbollah fighters were killed in skirmishes with Israeli forces, illustrating the fragility of the cease-fire.
Early today, Hezbollah guerrillas fired at least 10 Katyusha rockets that landed in southern Lebanon, the Israeli army said, adding that nobody was injured. The army said none of the rockets had crossed the border, so it had not responded.
Any Hezbollah rocket attack on Israel would likely spark Israeli retaliation, and an Israeli airstrike would likely draw a response from the guerrillas, especially if it killed civilians.
Peace is vulnerable to "a provocation, or a stray act, that could undermine everything," said French Maj. Gen. Alain Pellegrini, who heads a 2,000-soldier U.N. force already in southern Lebanon.
The additional 13,000 international troops planned for the U.N. force "need to arrive as quickly as possible," he said.
In the village of Kafra, two young men in khakis were spotted carrying semiautomatic rifles, and others talked into two-way radios.
Israeli troops were only a few miles away in positions overlooking the town of Tibnin, according to the Israeli military. They were just a small portion of the 30,000 soldiers that Israel flooded into southern Lebanon in the 48 hours before the cease-fire took effect Monday morning.
The war began July 12 when fighters from Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border attack.
Israel began a series of air assaults across Lebanon in response, and
Hezbollah launched unprecedented rocket attacks against northern Israel. Hundreds of Lebanese and dozens of Israelis were killed. Both sides suffered more losses in a bitter ground war that lasted weeks.
The devastation of Lebanon's infrastructure and buildings has been estimated to reach $2.5 billion.
The conflict left nearly 950 people dead: 791 in Lebanon and 155 on the Israeli side, according to official counts.
Hezbollah fighters hugged each other, and celebratory gunfire and fireworks erupted in Beirut as the Islamic militant group's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Monday claimed a "strategic, historic victory."
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also claimed success, saying the offensive eliminated the "state within a state" run by Hezbollah group and restored Lebanon's sovereignty in the south.
In northern Israel, residents emerged from bomb shelters, hopeful that the barrage of nearly 4,000 Hezbollah rockets had ended. Stores shuttered for weeks reopened, and some people returned to the beaches in Haifa, which suffered most from guerrilla attacks.
Carloads of weary-looking Hezbollah men heading north Monday from the combat zone grinned when asked about the 34-day battle that raged between the Shiite Muslim militia and the Israeli army.
Women and children who were heading south for a difficult homecoming to neighborhoods torn and splintered by Israeli bombs said the monthlong battle was aptly described in newly printed posters from Hezbollah as "a victory from God."
Tel Aviv University history professor Eyal Zisser, who has published widely on Hezbollah and its impact on Lebanon, says the cease-fire has a good chance of taking root because both sides have come to understand that "they can only lose by continuing the war."
For Israel, there are the cost in soldiers and civilians killed and the economic and psychological impacts of more than 1 million Israelis in the north of the country being forced to live in bomb shelters.
For Hezbollah, there are the even heavier death toll and the wholesale destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure. And after more than a month of misery, Zisser said, the parties may not want to admit it, but they are losing stamina. "As long as there are Israeli forces on the ground, there might be some exchanges of fire," he said. "But as far as launching rockets [into Israel] and bombing inside Lebanon, this will stop because both sides are eager to have a cease-fire."
Compiled from The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, McClatchy Newspapers and The Associated Press

Published on Monday, August 14, 2006 by the Independent / UK

Bush 'Viewed War in Lebanon as a Curtain-Raiser for Attack on Iran'

by Andrew Buncombe

The Bush administration was informed in advance and gave the "green light" to Israel's military strikes against Hizbollah ­ with plans drawn up months before two Israeli soldiers were seized ­it has been claimed. The US reportedly considered Israel's actions as a necessary prerequisite for a possible strike against Iran. A report by a leading investigative reporter says that earlier this summer Israeli officials visited Washington to brief the government on its plan to respond to any Hizbollah provocation and to "find out how much the US would bear". The officials apparently started their inquiries with Vice-President Dick Cheney, knowing that if they secured his support, obtaining the backing of President Bush and Condoleezza Rice would be easier. The report by Seymour Hersh quotes an unidentified US government consultant with close ties to the Israelis who says: "The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits. Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran." A former intelligence officer, also quoted, says: "We told Israel,'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office'." Both Israeli and US officials say that the Israeli military operation against Hizbollah was triggered by the seizing of two Israeli soldiers, apparently to be bargained with for a possible prisoner swap. But Hersh's report, published in today's issue of The New Yorker, adds to evidence that Israel had been anticipating a Hizbollah provocation for some time and planning its response ­ a response that was widely condemned for being disproportionate. Last month the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "Israel's military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation last week by Hizbollah militants was unfolding according to a plan finalised more than a year ago". The report said that a senior Israeli army officer had been briefing diplomats, journalists and think-tanks for more than a year about the plan and it quoted Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at [Israel's] Bar-Ilan University, who said: "Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared." Last week the New Statesman magazine reported that Britain had also been informed in advance of the military preparations and that the Prime Minister had chosen not to try to stop them "because he did not want to". This latest report is the first to tie the Israeli operation to a broader framework that includes a possible US strike against Iran. Unidentified officials said a strike could "ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre-emptive attack". Shabtai Shavit, a national security adviser to the Knesset, said: "We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America's requirements, that's just part of a relationship between two friends. Hizbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time." An anonymous Middle East expert claimed that while the State Department supported the plan because it believed it would help the Lebanese government assert control over the south, the White House was focussed on stripping Hizbollah of its missiles. The expert added: "If there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hizbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the 'axis of evil', and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hizbollah as part of his interest in democratisation." Last night the White House denied the allegations contained in Hersh's piece with a brief statement from the President describing it as "patently untrue". Mr Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, added: " The suggestion that the US and Israel planned and co-ordinated an attack on Hizbollah ­ and did so as a prelude to an attack on Iran ­ is just flat wrong."