Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html
July 28, 2006
The Overview
Israel Approves Call-Up, but Sets No Deployment
By GREG MYRE [Israel] [Israel’s 2-front war] [followup] [roughly day 16] [*****************] [“arab street siding with undergod, Hezbollah] [*************]
JERUSALEM, July 27 — A day after Israel suffered its worst losses in its two-week fight in Lebanon, the government on Thursday approved call-ups for as many as 30,000 reserve troops, suggesting that it may be gearing up for a protracted battle.
The security cabinet nonetheless ruled out a major military escalation for now, opting to maintain a focus on wide-ranging airstrikes and limited ground incursions along the border.
The cabinet approved call-ups for up to three divisions. Israeli officials did not say how many soldiers that would include, though Israeli news outlets estimated the number to be between 15,000 and 30,000. The country has hundreds of thousands of reservists because most adult men are part of the reserves.
Israel’s defense minister, Amir Peretz, said the reservists would undergo training, but were not slated to be deployed in Lebanon at this time. “We are recruiting reserve troops so that, if need be, we will be able to exercise the necessary force,” he said.
While Israelis overwhelmingly back the military campaign in Lebanon, which began with a Hezbollah raid into Israel on July 12, a growing number of politicians and media commentators are calling for a more intense ground campaign to drive Hezbollah militants from Israel’s northern border, where they have been launching 100 rockets or more into northern Israel on most days.
Justice Minister Haim Ramon said publicly that Israel had effectively received the go-ahead to continue its fight when the world powers gathered in Rome on Wednesday failed to reach an agreement on a cease-fire plan.
The lack of an agreement will allow Israel “to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah won’t be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed,” Mr. Ramon told Army Radio. “Everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror.”
But Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said such a conclusion misinterpreted the outcome of the Rome meeting. “I would say just the opposite,” he told The Associated Press. “Yesterday, in Rome, it was clear that everyone present wanted to see an end to the fighting as swiftly as possible.”
Israeli warplanes again dropped bombs throughout Lebanon on Thursday, hitting roads and buildings in the southern and the eastern parts of the country. Radio and television relay stations were hit north of Beirut. One Lebanese policeman was reported killed when his car was hit, in the eastern town of Zahle.
Israeli ground troops and Hezbollah militants also exchanged fire in the southern town of Bint Jbail, the scene of the most intense fighting Wednesday, but no new casualties were reported.
In the clashes there Wednesday, eight Israeli soldiers were killed and a ninth died in the neighboring village of Marun al Ras. Hezbollah also suffered significant casualties, though the group did not provide any figures.
Hezbollah had fired about 110 rockets into northern Israel as of Thursday night, and several people suffered minor injuries, the Israeli authorities said. It launched 150 rockets on Wednesday, the largest one-day total since the fighting began on July 12.
Food and other aid continued to trickle into the country. While supplies are beginning to arrive, some foreign truck drivers have refused to travel to areas being bombed. At the Arida border crossing with Syria in northern Lebanon, Turkish trucks bringing food stopped to transfer their supplies to Lebanese-owned trucks in a laborious process that took more than an hour a truck.
In Lebanon, hospitals have received the bodies of more than 400 people killed in the fighting, and the country’s health minister, Muhammad Khalifeh, said an estimated 150 to 200 bodies were still under the rubble. “We have not been able to pull them out because the areas they died in are still under fire,” [******]Mr. Khalifeh told Reuters.
Fifty-two Israelis have been killed, including 19 civilians who died in rocket attacks. [********]
At the United Nations on Thursday, the Security Council adopted a statement that expressed shock and distress at the killings of four unarmed United Nations observers on Tuesday but avoided the direct criticism of Israel and its motives that had been in earlier drafts.
The issue has become a heated one at the United Nations because of initial claims on Tuesday night in Rome by Secretary General Kofi Annan that the attack may have been deliberate. In a Security Council briefing on Wednesday, United Nations officials told of their daylong efforts to stop Israeli attacks on the outpost in southern Lebanon where the men — from China, Austria, Finland and Canada — were killed.
The statement, which emerged after hours of negotiation Wednesday night and Thursday, underlined “the importance of insuring that U.N. personnel are not the object of attack,” but it turned aside Mr. Annan’s request that the United Nations be permitted to join in the Israeli investigation of the incident.
Wang Guangya, the ambassador from China, said the United States had stood alone on the 15-member Council in insisting that the language be toned down. He said this represented a lack of “respect” for other countries and had caused frustration, which he said would prejudice American interests in other United Nations negotiations.
He was referring to the current talks on a resolution condemning Iran’s nuclear program, in which China is resisting pressure from the United States and its European allies for a measure promising sanctions on Tehran. “I think the frustration is there, and this frustration will definitely affect the working relations somewhat, somewhere,” he said.
In Israel, the government and military remain wary of a major ground campaign that could lead to high casualties and an extended presence across the border only six years after the country’s troops withdrew from southern Lebanon. So far, ground operations have been largely limited to Bint Jbail and a few nearby villages just a mile or two across the border.
Some critics within Israel have argued that the military campaign is moving too slowly, and others say the country must seek an overwhelming victory that will remove Hezbollah as a threat on the northern border. “What this terrorist organization symbolizes must be destroyed at any price,” Zeev Schiff, a longtime military analyst, wrote in Haaretz, a liberal daily. “If Hezbollah does not experience defeat in this war, this will spell the end of Israeli deterrence against its enemies.”
“There is a whole generation in Israel that may not recall how many useless cease-fire agreements were signed in Lebanon,” Mr. Schiff added. “Israel does not need another cease-fire of this sort in southern Lebanon; it needs a new reality that, at the least, will distance Hezbollah’s military wing from this area.”
But the security cabinet opted to keep the current level of operations. “There was a serious discussion among the ministers, and the decision was to continue with the current strategy,” said Mark Regev, a Foreign Ministry spokesman. “The ministers decided there is no quick fix, that a dramatic escalation would not bring a magic solution.”
Israeli leaders have been sharply critical of Syria and Iran, which support Hezbollah, but at the same time, the Israeli officials say they do not want the fighting to spill into Syria. “We have no intention of opening a front against Syria, but the Syrians know we are on guard and they are ready for any change in the situation,” Israel’s defense minister, Amir Peretz, said Thursday evening. “We hope Hezbollah doesn’t drag Syria into this crisis.”
In the Israeli conflict in Gaza, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, told Prime Minister Romano Prodi of Italy on Thursday that he believed a solution could soon be reached in the case involving the Israeli soldier who was kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants on June 25.
“For the Israeli soldier, there are efforts under way that lead us to believe that an imminent solution is possible,” Mr. Abbas told reporters in Rome, according to a translation provided by Mr. Prodi’s office. “I hope that the soldier is in good health and can return soon to his family.”
However, Palestinian factions said they were not aware of an imminent deal. “If the soldier is in his hands, then he can release him,” Yahiya al-Abadsah, a Parliament member from Hamas, which runs the government, said of Mr. Abbas, who belongs to the opposition Fatah movement. “But he cannot do anything outside the national consensus.”
Khader Habib, a spokesman for the militant group Islamic Jihad, said: “I think this is not the time for making these declarations. As far as I know, the Egyptians are mediating. But now is the time to talk about the Israeli aggression that is going on in Gaza.”
The armed wing of Hamas is one of three groups that claimed collective responsibility for the seizure of the soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, who was taken from a post just outside Gaza’s perimeter fence.
Hamas and other Palestinian groups have demanded the release of large numbers of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel in exchange for Corporal Shalit. Israel says it will not negotiate.
In Gaza, where 23 Palestinians were killed Wednesday, Israeli troops and Palestinian militants again clashed along the eastern edge of Gaza City on Thursday, but on a smaller scale. Still, four Palestinians were killed, including an elderly woman, Palestinian medical workers said.
Another Palestinian was shot dead in Jerusalem after he fired on police officers, wounding two of them, the police said. In the northern West Bank, the Israeli police on Thursday evening found the body of a missing Jewish settler in a burned-out car near a Palestinian village. The settler, who was not identified, had been missing since Thursday morning.
Nearly 150 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its offensive a month ago to retrieve its captured soldier and halt Palestinian rocket fire. The death toll includes a large number of militants and civilians, according to Palestinian monitoring groups.
The European Union said on Thursday that it had begun paying stipends to Palestinian doctors and nurses. “By paying social allowances to front-line health workers, we are keeping an essential service going,” Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the external affairs commissioner for the European Union, said during a visit to Gaza.
Western countries cut funding to the Palestinian Authority after the Hamas government took power earlier this year, and government employees have gone largely unpaid in recent months. In the past few days, government workers have been receiving partial payment of their salaries.
Hassan M. Fattah contributed reporting from Arida, Lebanon, for this article, Peter Kiefer from Rome, and Warren Hoge from the United Nations.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company