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Israel hezbollah vow wider war { July 15 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071400385.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/14/AR2006071400385.html
Israel, Hezbollah Vow Wider War
At Least 66 Dead in Lebanon; Militia Strikes Warship at Sea
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, July 15, 2006; A01
BEIRUT, July 15 -- The leader of Hezbollah promised an all-out war Friday after Israeli warplanes attacked his residence and Hezbollah's main headquarters in an apparent assassination attempt, and Israel vowed to press its offensive in Lebanon until the Shiite Muslim militant group was disarmed. As Hasan Nasrallah spoke, an Israeli warship was struck and set ablaze off the Lebanese coast in an unprecedented strike, possibly by an unmanned drone.
The quick succession of events after nightfall again recalibrated a three-day war in which each side has methodically raised the stakes since Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid Wednesday. The Lebanese government urged the U.N. Security Council to establish a cease-fire, to no avail, and the White House said President Bush would not press Israel to halt its attacks.
After a cabinet meeting, Israeli officials said the military would further prosecute an offensive that has already sent scores of missiles into Beirut's international airport, as well as bridges, power stations and roads, and blocked most ways out of the country.
Thousands fled Lebanon across one of the few routes left -- a circuitous trek along mountainous back roads to the Syrian border. The capital itself was eerily quiet, the silence punctuated only by the fireworks and gunfire that greeted Nasrallah's speech.
"You wanted an open war. We are heading towards an open war, and we are ready for it," Nasrallah said by telephone to the group's television station, al-Manar, less than an hour after the Israeli strikes on his residence and the headquarters building.
In the speech, Nasrallah struck a more serious tone than he had Wednesday, when he announced the capture of the two Israeli soldiers and insisted they would be freed only in exchange for three Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails. With dramatic phrasing, he said Friday that Lebanese now had two choices: either surrender to Israel's demands or fight with Hezbollah. He renewed a threat to carry the fight deep into Israel, which has so far suffered four dead from the scores of rockets Hezbollah has fired over three days.
"To Haifa?" he asked. "Believe me, beyond Haifa and beyond that."
"The surprises that I have promised you will start now," Nasrallah said. "Now in the middle of the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that has attacked the infrastructure, people's homes and civilians. Look at it burning."
Israeli news media said the warship was hit 10 miles off the Lebanese coast by an unmanned aircraft rigged with explosives, causing damage to its steering capability and igniting a fire. The Israeli military confirmed to news services that four Israeli sailors were missing.
Military officials refused to confirm the cause of the damage, saying it might have been inflicted by either a missile or a drone. The ship was towed back to Israel.
The attack would not mark the first known use of unmanned aerial drones by Hezbollah. Twice in the past two years, its operatives have launched unarmed drones that penetrated Israeli airspace. In the most recent incident, in April 2005, an Iranian-made drone that took off just north of the Israeli border flew for nearly nine minutes over Jewish settlements in western Galilee before returning to its base, Israeli military officials confirmed. The low-flying drone was equipped with a camera that filmed the entire 18-mile flight, portions of which were later broadcast on a Web site controlled by Hezbollah.
In Lebanon on Friday, Israeli jets again struck the Beirut airport after the Lebanese national carrier managed to fly five planes to Amman, Jordan. As part of its tightening siege, Israel also struck the Beirut-to-Damascus highway overnight, and warships extended their naval blockade to the northern port of Tripoli.
In the morning, Israeli jets struck bridges and roads in the southern suburbs of Beirut that serve as Hezbollah's stronghold. In a marked escalation, attacks there at night targeted Nasrallah's home and the party's headquarters. Al-Manar said Nasrallah, his family and aides escaped unharmed but that three others were killed.
In the south, police said Israeli attacks killed five others, bringing the toll in Lebanon to at least 66 dead, nearly all of them civilians.
"They don't want to strike civilians? Then why are they doing it?" asked Mohammed Fathi, a 37-year-old resident of south Beirut. He stood outside Harkous Chicken, the restaurant where he works as a chef. The smell of peppers mixed with the reek of cordite, and workers swept shattered glass off the street near a bridge destroyed in a pre-dawn airstrike. The facades of nearby buildings were sheared off, and cars with broken windows sat parked along a street strewn with debris.
"We are paying a high price, but we're ready to pay it," Fathi said. "Let them strike once, twice or more. We don't care. Each time they strike, we're going to build again. If one of us dies, we're ready to give 10 more."
In the northern Israeli town of Meron, a woman and her 5-year-old grandson were killed Friday when a Katyusha rocket fired by Hezbollah militiamen from southern Lebanon landed on their house, Israeli military officials said. The attack, which wounded 10 others, brought the civilian death toll in Israel to four, with more than 100 injured.
Israeli officials said dozens of Katyusha rockets struck northern border towns from Nahariya to Kiryat Shmona over the course of the day, injuring more than 50 civilians. Most of those treated in local hospitals were suffering from the effects of anxiety, but others were treated for moderate and light injuries as a result of shrapnel.
Israel's security cabinet met in Nahariya with mayors and community council members as several rockets struck nearby. In a decision later in the day, the cabinet decided to extend military operations in Lebanon to deal with the rocket strikes.
Isaac Herzog, a member of the security cabinet, said in a telephone interview after the meeting that Hezbollah's attacks represented "a flagrant increase in attacks on Israeli civilians in the north."
"They are intolerable and we will take forceful measures to stop them," Herzog said. "I think Nasrallah will see that Israel has a strong backbone."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan by telephone that Israel would not end its military operation in Lebanon until the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for the disarming of Hezbollah and the deployment of the Lebanese army in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has adamantly rejected such a development, although some Lebanese politicians have begun trying to lay the groundwork for a deal that might extend the army's control.
Israel is effectively fighting a low-grade battle on two fronts, one in Lebanon and the other in the Gaza Strip. Early Saturday, an Israeli missile struck the offices of the Palestinian Economy Ministry in the al-Nasir neighborhood, north of Gaza City, Palestinian security officials said. They said there were no injuries. In the past two weeks, Israel has also targeted the Gaza offices of the Palestinian prime minister, foreign minister and interior minister in a campaign aimed at destabilizing the Hamas-led government and freeing another captured Israeli soldier.
Earlier, an Israeli tank in Gaza fired on a truck that was approaching its position but refused orders to stop, an Israeli military spokeswoman said. One man was killed and another was injured, Palestinian security forces reported.
The scope of the attacks in Lebanon and the mounting civilian toll there have drawn wide-ranging condemnation. French President Jacques Chirac denounced Hezbollah's attacks but called Israel's actions "totally disproportionate." The United Nations' top humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, said Israel's attacks against transportation infrastructure violated international law.
The fighting led thousands of Lebanese, foreign tourists and Syrian laborers to flee to Syria on Friday, crossing at the Masnaa border post. The main road was damaged in the bombing, but most people were able to find their way using back roads. A Syrian border official estimated that about 15,000 vehicles had passed through the crossing over two days. Hotels in the Syrian capital, Damascus, were fully booked, and the city's airport was crowded with travelers awaiting flights.
"We left because there is a war," said Mohamad Safadi, 26, a Syrian laborer who had been living in south Beirut and who walked and hitchhiked his way back to Syria. "For three days we have been under attack, and the Israelis are merciless."
Arab governments have pointedly stopped short of backing Hezbollah's abduction of the two Israeli soldiers, with Saudi Arabia calling it an "uncalculated adventure." But in Damascus, Syria's ruling Baath Party vowed to support Hezbollah against Israeli attacks, and cars careered through the city's streets after nightfall honking horns and displaying Hezbollah's yellow and green banner.
Lebanese have debated whether Hezbollah expected the full brunt of the Israeli attacks. At his news conference Wednesday, Nasrallah said Hezbollah was prepared for any Israeli response, and the faction's officials have kept to that line since. "We have planned for this," one official said in an interview. "And when you plan for an operation like that, you are prepared for all possibilities."
But some Lebanese are recalling the grim days of the 1982 Israeli invasion, when Beirut was besieged.
"It led us to a war we are not prepared to fight," said Yassin Soueid, a retired Lebanese general. "Israel could hit the presidential palace. . . . They can hit wherever they want, and there is nothing we can do about it."
Opinion has divided largely along sectarian lines. Hardly anyone, at least publicly, supports Israel's methods in trying to dismantle Hezbollah, but there is deep anger at the consequences of a decision Hezbollah took on its own. Still, the group enjoys deep and often fervent support among Shiite Muslims, the country's largest single community, giving Hezbollah a virtual veto over any government decision or any solution imposed from abroad.
Across the country, Hezbollah's strength has given Lebanese a sense that an impasse could drag on for weeks, perhaps longer.
At the Sahel Hospital, in Beirut's southern suburbs, Mohammed Ibrahim lay in a bed with injuries to his forehead, shoulder and right leg and burns on his back, suffered when an Israeli missile struck a bridge. The wiry 26-year-old from Syria had been walking from his apartment for dawn prayers at the Martyrs' Mosque.
"I think there's going to be a war," he said. "Israel started it, but God willing, the Arabs will finish it." On the television, al-Jazeera broadcast video footage of the latest damage, and Ibrahim spoke again.
His tone had changed. "I just want to go home," he said.
Correspondents Scott Wilson in Jerusalem and John Ward Anderson in Gaza City, staff writer Joby Warrick in Washington and special correspondents Alia Ibrahim and Lynn Maalouf in Beirut and Rhonda Roumani in Damascus contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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