| ANALYSIS-Israel, Hizbollah seek victory from stalemate |
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| Written by fayce | |
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Hizbollah still holds the two Israeli soldiers whose capture ignited the war on July 12 and, despite losing scores of fighters, proves daily that it can rain rockets over the border. But the rocket fire has only hardened Israeli determination to quell the threat. Israel has 10,000 troops inside Lebanon, though it wants to avoid another costly long-term occupation. Neither side will talk to the other. Mediation is tricky as no outside party is trusted by both Israel and Hizbollah. The United States stymied attempts by some world powers to halt the conflict swiftly because it saw the Israeli effort to cripple Hizbollah and deter the Shi'ite group's allies in Syria and Iran as fitting in with its own "war on terror". Now, as international pressure to stop the killing grows, Washington is moving closer to French-led demands for a truce to take effect before a longer-term peace deal is worked out. TWO RESOLUTIONS Ideas discussed at the United Nations focus on an initial Security Council resolution that would call for a truce and possibly reinforce existing U.N. peacekeepers in south Lebanon. A second resolution later would mandate a new international force and set terms for long-term border security. Only then would the force, possibly led by France, deploy in the south. Israel also says it is only then that it would withdraw from a border belt of Lebanese land it is fighting to secure. However, Israel might not oppose an early truce, now that it says its goals are near completion, but it would want to ensure its own terms, including a right to act if it felt under threat. It is not yet clear if Hizbollah would accept a truce while Israeli troops are inside Lebanon, or if it would pull fighters back from the border to make way for an international force. Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, while he has not ruled out such a force for the south, would certainly fight if it tried to interfere with the group's weapons arsenal. Israel wants the Islamist movement -- which it sees as a tool of Iran bent on the Jewish state's destruction -- to be disarmed in line with a 2004 U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon. "The outcome has to be that Lebanon will be governed by the legitimate government of Lebanon, not by the private militias," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Olmert said on Wednesday. Olmert told Reuters Israel had destroyed much of Hizbollah's capacity and sent out a strong deterrent message. "I personally presume that it will take a very long time, if at all, before anyone, Hizbollah or Syria or anyone, will think of shooting missiles on the Israeli population," he said. But Hizbollah remains defiant, saying it will not let Israel gain from diplomacy what it has failed to win in battle. The group says it will stop rocketing Israel once Israeli attacks on Lebanon cease, but will not give up its weapons until Israeli troops leave Lebanese soil, including the disputed Shebaa Farms area -- and probably not even then. RESISTING ISRAEL "Our weapons are not an end in themselves. They are aimed at resisting Israel," Hizbollah's Trad Hamadeh, a minister in the Lebanese cabinet, told Le Figaro newspaper on Thursday. "When the Lebanese prisoners in Israel have been freed and the Israelis have withdrawn from the Shebaa Farms, Hizbollah's liberating role of resistance will have ended," he said. Hamadeh said disarming Hizbollah would have to wait until all the Lebanese had agreed on a defence strategy that would prevent Israel from violating Lebanon's air space and waters. The Beirut government, which has pleaded for an immediate ceasefire since the war began, has proposed a seven-point peace plan endorsed by the cabinet and its two Hizbollah members. This calls for a prisoner swap between Lebanon and Israel, extending government sovereignty to the south and putting Shebaa Farms under U.N. control until the dispute is settled. Negotiations on these complex issues will take time, but without some political deal accepted by Israel, Lebanon and Hizbollah, few nations will risk sending troops into harm's way. "Everyone has difficulty with the idea of finding themselves exposed to an Iraq-style guerrilla war with suicide bombers and attacks," Italy's Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said. Trackback(0)
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