Doug Lorimer
Three days after Israel's "justice" minister, Haim Ramon, told Israeli Army Radio on July 27 that "everyone in southern Lebanon is a terrorist", an Israeli warplane fired a missiles into a three-storey residential building in the southern Lebanese village of Qana, killing at least 20 adults and 34 children.
The next day, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert claimed that the Qana massacre was a "tragic mistake". However, the massacre was fully in line with Israel's war strategy as outlined by Ramon on July 27: "In order to prevent casualties among Israeli soldiers battling Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon, villages should be flattened by the Israeli air force before ground troops move in."
The night-time air strike on Qana — one of 159 carried out that day across Lebanon — was the bloodiest single attack by Israel since it began its round-the-clock aerial bombardment on July 13.
The Qana massacre, which evoked memories of a similar Israeli massacre in the village in 1996, brought immediate condemnation from across the Arab world.
Associated Press reported on July 30: "In April 1996 more than 100 Lebanese civilians were killed in Qana in the hills east of the port city of Tyre, in an Israeli artillery shelling of a UN base. The civilians had sought refuge with the UN to escape Israeli bombardment and the attack sparked an international outcry that helped end an Israeli offensive."
The latest onslaught on Lebanon was authorised by the Israeli cabinet two hours after Lebanon's Muqawama Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance) — the armed organisation of Lebanon's Shiite-based Hezbollah party — captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12 with the aim of forcing Israel to negotiate a prisoner exchange.
However, Israel has used this small Hezbollah operation as an excuse to launch a war of collective punishment on the entire Lebanese nation. Israeli warplanes have attacked residential buildings, clearly marked ambulances, fleeing civilians prominently waving white flags, and UN observer posts and personnel, as well as civilian airports, power stations, grain silos, roads, bridges and television stations.
Support for Hezbollah grows
While the Israeli rulers hoped that the terror and devastation they have inflicted on Lebanon would turn most of its citizens against Hezbollah, the result has been the opposite.
The July 28 Christian Science Monitor reported that a poll released by the Beirut Centre for Research and Information had found that 87% of Lebanese, including 80% of Lebanese Christians, supported Hezbollah's resistance to Israeli attacks on Lebanon. "Lebanese no longer blame Hezbollah for sparking the war by kidnapping the Israeli soldiers, but Israel and the US instead", the Boston-based daily observed.
Christians make up 39% of Lebanon's population of 3.9 million, while Muslims make up 60%. Forty per cent of Lebanese are Shiites, who live mostly in southern Lebanon and are politically represented in the country's parliament and in its government by Hezbollah. The poll found that 97% of Shiites approved of Hezbollah's resistance.
AP reported that before dawn on July 30, "Israeli forces backed by heavy artillery fire crossed the border and clashed with Hezbollah guerrillas. Heavy artillery rained down on the nearby villages of Yuhmor and Arnoun as Israeli jets were seen in the skies overhead.
"The [Israeli ground] incursion came after Israeli forces pulled back Saturday from Bint Jbail, the furthest point of their first major ground incursion across the border, launched a week ago. The [first] incursion sparked heavy fighting with Hezbollah guerrillas, who put up a tougher resistance than expected and appeared to still be in the area after the pullback" that followed the deaths of at least eight Israeli soldiers in the battle for Bint Jbeil.
Located five kilometres from the border, Bint Jbeil had been inhabited by 30,000 people before it was reduced to rubble by 3000 Israeli artillery shells.
In a July 29 Beirut TV interview, Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah said that the group would continue to fire rockets into Israel as long as Lebanon was under attack. He said the Israeli army had suffered a "serious defeat" at Bint Jbeil, adding that the "victory of the Lebanese resistance in this battle is a victory for all the Lebanese and for all honest Arabs, Muslims and Christians".
The Qana massacre brought the death toll of Lebanese citizens killed by Israeli air and artillery attacks since July 13 to at least 750, according to the Lebanese health ministry. "Thirty-three Israeli soldiers have died, and Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel have killed 18 civilians", AP reported.
According to the UN, at least 900,000 Lebanese civilians have fled their homes to avoid Israeli air strikes. "But many thousands more", AP reported, "are still believed holed up in the south, taking refuge in schools, hospitals or basements of apartment buildings amid the fighting — many of them too afraid to flee on roads heavily hit by Israeli strikes".
Israel, US resist ceasefire
AP reported that within hours of the Qana massacre, Olmert told his cabinet: "We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents this morning. We will continue the activity and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation."
The massacre, the wire service observed, "came at an especially inopportune time for [US Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice. Arriving Saturday for a second visit in a week to the Middle East, she hoped to broker an agreement that could serve as a foundation for a UN Security Council resolution" that would authorise the deployment of a multinational military force to help Israel destroy the Hezbollah-led Lebanese resistance movement.
Lebanese PM Fouad Saniora, responding to the news of the Qana massacre, announced that his government had cancelled Rice's visit to Beirut. "There is no place at this sad moment for any discussions other than an immediate and unconditional ceasefire as well as international investigation of the Israeli massacres in Lebanon now", he told reporters.
The US has repeatedly blocked efforts by Lebanon and most other countries to get a UN resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, and has rushed to resupply the Israeli war machine with fresh missiles and jet fuel.
On July 28, the Lebanese cabinet, including its two Hezbollah ministers, endorsed a peace plan that calls for an immediate ceasefire, for Israel to agree on a prisoner exchange, the strengthening of the existing 1900-member United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon and the deployment of the Lebanese army to the area.
Under the plan, Hezbollah would abolish its military wing once Israel withdraws from all Lebanese territory, including the Shebaa Farms, which Israel has held since its 1982 invasion. This aspect of the peace plan is consistent with agreements Hezbollah has previously signed with other parties in the Lebanese parliament, including its February memorandum of understanding with the Christian-based Free Patriotic Movement.
The US and Israel however have insisted that before they will agree to any ceasefire, the Security Council must authorise the deployment of a "strong" — meaning war-fighting, rather than "peacekeeping" — international military force of tens of thousands of foreign troops to "assist" the Lebanese army disarm Hezbollah.
James Dobbins, a former US envoy to Afghanistan, told AP on July 31 that worldwide outrage at the Qana massacre would intensify pressure on the US to join other countries in calling for an immediate ceasefire. "It does underscore the degree to which the war is escalating, passions are increasing and American and Israeli isolation is deepening", he said.
That same day, Reuters reported that Israel had "agreed to suspend its aerial bombardment of southern Lebanon for 48 hours, starting immediately, to allow for an investigation into Sunday's bombing that killed 54 civilians". The announcement was made by US State Department spokesperson Adam Ereli at a press briefing in Jerusalem after Rice held extended meetings with Olmert and Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni.
Immediately after the meeting, at which Olmert told her Israel wanted to continue attacking Lebanon for at least another two weeks, Rice told reporters that she thought a ceasefire could be achieved "within days, not weeks" — a statement aimed at defusing international pressure on Washington to call for an immediate ceasefire.
Israeli aggression escalates
Later on July 31, Israeli war minister Amir Peretz told the Israeli parliament that his government had agreed to "limit" air attacks on southern Lebanon for 48 hours, but would "expand and strengthen" its artillery shelling and ground attacks on towns and villages in the area. "It's forbidden to agree to an immediate ceasefire" Peretz said.
The Lebanese Naharnet news website reported on August 1 that by "midday Monday, no Hezbollah rocket attacks had been reported since Israel began the suspension of air strikes at 2 am", but that "Hezbollah fighters battled advancing Israeli forces in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, hours after Israel's cabinet gave the army the green light to widen its three-week-old offensive up to the Litani River.
"In Jerusalem, officials said the Israeli army's objective was to drive Hezbollah out of the 30-kilometre wide and deep area south of the Litani River and then control it until an international stabilisation force is deployed there. It would take them beyond the port city of Tyre, which has been swollen with refugees fleeing villages since Israel launched its massive land, sea and air offensive ...
"Security sources in Tyre meanwhile said that Israeli warplanes carried out fresh air strikes during the night and early Tuesday, despite a 48-hour halt to the raids announced by Israel. They struck villages east of the city, another six along the banks of the Litani in the central sector, and three more on the western Bekaa region to the east."
The August 1 New York Times reported that "Israel [had] sent up to 7000 troops into Lebanon" that same day, adding: "There were house-to-house battles with hundreds of Hezbollah fighters in Lebanese towns and villages close to the border."
The paper also reported that "at least one helicopter with Israeli commandos landed near Baalbek, in eastern Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold well north of the Litani River, marking a deeper, if limited, invasion".