US Offers Conditional Ceasefire Plan
According to Reuters, "Israel wants Hizbollah to leave the border area immediately and free the captured soldiers without conditions.... Israel's army believes it may have [another] week to keep pounding Hizbollah before a deal is reached, security sources said." Israel began planning this "three week war" when Hizbollah succeeded in forcing Israel out of Lebanon in 2000.
Last week, the US gave Israel a "green light" to continue bombing Lebanon, although at the same time the UN called for an immediate ceasefire.
Israel "is taking Lebanon backward 50 years and the result will be Lebanon’s destruction," prime minister Fuad Saniora reportedly told Rice. Recent news reports have highlighted Lebanese civilian casualties; one-third are estimated to be children. (tip) Almost 400 Lebanese (at least 20 soldiers, three Hezbollah) have died, 41 Israelis (at least 17 soldiers).
Israeli Attack Years In The Making
According to the Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, Israel began making plans for a war with Hezbollah when it withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. (Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982.) "By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board." Hezbollah grew out of the 1982 occupation. One of its civic missions is helping rebuild homes destroyed during that occupation.
More than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to U.S. and other diplomats, journalists and think tanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail. Under the ground rules of the briefings, the officer could not be identified.
In his talks, the officer described a three-week campaign: The first week concentrated on destroying Hezbollah's heavier long-range missiles, bombing its command-and-control centers, and disrupting transportation and communication arteries. In the second week, the focus shifted to attacks on individual sites of rocket launchers or weapons stores. In the third week, ground forces in large numbers would be introduced, but only in order to knock out targets discovered during reconnaissance missions as the campaign unfolded. There was no plan, according to this scenario, to reoccupy southern Lebanon on a long-term basis.
In April, President Bush greeted Saniora at the White House:
I told the Prime Minister that the United States strongly supports a free and independent and sovereign Lebanon...
We talked about the great tradition of Lebanon to serve as a model of entrepreneurship and prosperity. Beirut is one of the great international cities, and I'm convinced that if Lebanon is truly free and independent and democratic, that Beirut will once again regain her place as a center of financial and culture and the arts.
That's quite a contrast to activities this week:
The people of Lebanon are facing their "hour of greatest need", the United Nations said on Monday in launching an emergency appeal for $150-million to help an estimated 800 000 civilians whose lives have been disrupted by Israeli bombing of Lebanon.
The situation in Lebanon is "very bad, and deteriorating by the day", said [Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator]. On Sunday he described the bombing of south Beirut as "a violation of humanitarian law".
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