Israel's security cabinet backs expanded ground offensive
Israel’s security cabinet today decided to vastly expand its ground offensive and send troops deeper into Lebanon, in an attempt to deal more blows to Hezbollah and score quick battlefield victories before a Middle East ceasefire is imposed.
However, the decision, approved 9-0 with three abstentions, was fraught with considerable risk.
Israel could set itself up for new criticism that it is sabotaging diplomatic efforts, particularly after Lebanon offered to deploy its own troops in the border area.
Also, a wider ground offensive might do little to stop Hezbollah rocket fire on Israel, while sharply increasing the number of casualties among Israeli troops. The decision to broaden the offensive could also hasten a ceasefire resolution by the UN Security Council.
In the six-hour meeting, cabinet ministers were told a new offensive could mean 100 to 200 more military casualties, a participant said. So far, more than 70 Israeli soldiers have been killed.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s main concern in approving the new offensive was a growing casualty count, officials said.
The ministers met a day after the commander of Israeli forces in Lebanon was sidelined in an unusual mid-war shake-up, another sign of the growing dissatisfaction with the military, which has been unable to stop Hezbollah’s daily rocket barrages.
Today, as the security cabinet met, Hezbollah fired more than 130 rockets, bringing the war’s total to more than 3,300, police said.
The army denied it was dissatisfied with Major General Udi Adam, but military commentators said the commander was seen as too slow and cautious to score a decisive victory against the guerrillas.
The deputy chief of staff, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, was appointed to oversee the Lebanon fighting.
Under the army’s proposal for a wider offensive, troops would push to and in some cases beyond Lebanon’s Litani River, about 18 miles from the Israel-Lebanon border. With cabinet approval, troops could move forward immediately, defence officials said.
More than 10,000 Israeli soldiers have been fighting several hundred Hezbollah guerrillas in a four-mile stretch north of the border, but have faced fierce resistance.
Earlier this week, the Israeli military declared a no-drive zone south of the Litani and threatened to blast any moving vehicles as guerrilla targets.
Country roads and highways were deserted throughout the area today. In the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre, only pedestrians ventured into the streets.
In attacks today, Israel’s military struck Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, killing at least two people. In the eastern Bekaa Valley five people were killed and two feared dead in an Israeli raid.
Israeli airstrikes levelled a two-storey building in Mashghara early today, trapping seven people from the same family under debris, security officials said.
Five bodies were pulled out and the remaining two relatives were feared dead, officials said. The family’s sole survivor was the 80-year-old father, Ahmed Ibrahim Sader, who suffered serious wounds, they said.
Also today, Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets over the southern port city of Tyre again, and over Beirut proper for the first time. The identical flyers criticised Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, saying he was “playing with fire” and that the Lebanese people were “paying the price”.
Since the fighting began, at least 700 people have died on the Lebanese side of the conflict.
The total number of Lebanese civilian deaths rose by 47 yesterday as rescue workers pulled 14 more bodies from the wreckage of two buildings in south Beirut that were hit by Israeli missiles the night before. The toll in that attack now stands at 30.
The Israeli toll stood at 103 killed, 36 civilians and 67 soldiers. Fifteen Israeli soldiers were wounded in fierce night-time battles in south Lebanon, the army said. Ten of the soldiers were lightly hurt.
Diplomatic efforts were moving slowly, and Israeli cabinet ministers pushing for a wider offensive said there was no guarantee a ceasefire deal would, in fact, neutralise Hezbollah.
Israel is particularly sceptical of a Lebanese proposal to despatch 15,000 soldiers to south Lebanon after a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
“We will not agree to a situation in which the diplomatic solution will not promise us stability and quiet for many years,” Israeli Defence Minister Amir Peretz told visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Hezbollah has fired more than 3,100 rockets at Israeli towns in a month of fighting.
Lebanon’s proposal to deploy troops on the border appeared to have taken Israel by surprise.
Israel has long demanded a deployment of Lebanese forces in the border area, but only coupled with a serious effort by the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah.
Israel believes Lebanese forces are not strong or determined enough to do the job alone, and would like to see a multinational force in the area as well.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora praised Hezbollah’s resistance, but said it was time for Lebanon to “impose its full control, authority and presence” nationwide, as directed in previous UN resolutions that also called for the government to disarm Hezbollah.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the proposal was significant, but President Bush warned against leaving a vacuum into which Hezbollah and its sponsors are able to move more weapons.
While Bush said a UN Security Council resolution was needed quickly, the council put off for at least one day voting on a US-French ceasefire proposal.
The delay was to allow three leading Arab officials to present arguments that the resolution was heavily tilted in favour of Israel and did not “take Lebanon’s interest and stability into account”.
Both the US and French envoys to the UN indicated there might be room for limited compromise.
“Obviously we want to hear from the Arab League…and then we’ll decide where to go from there,” US Ambassador John Bolton said.
French UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere promised to take Lebanon’s stance into account.
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