By IPS Correspondents
JERUSALEM, Jul 17 2006 (IPS)

When Israeli planes bombed two runways at Beirut airport in the early hours of Thursday morning, signalling the start of a major aerial assault, the immediate trigger had been an attack the day before by Hezbollah militants who had crossed the Lebanon border into Israel, killed three Israeli soldiers and snatched two more.

But as he directs the military operation Israel has launched in Lebanon, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appears to be looking way beyond the safe return of the two captured soldiers. He wants to establish a new deterrent balance in southern Lebanon, which is largely controlled by Hezbollah and where the Lebanese government has refused to deploy its forces.

On Friday, the Israeli leader told UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that Israel would not end its operation in Lebanon until the full implementation of Security Council resolution 1559, which calls for Hezbollah to be disarmed and for the Lebanese army to be deployed in the south of the country.

The day before, defence minister Amir Peretz had begun to spell out the aims of the aerial bombardment of Lebanon: Hezbollah, he said, would not be allowed to return to positions it had held along the Israel-Lebanon border up until the Wednesday morning attack.

“If the government of Lebanon fails to deploy its forces, as is expected of a sovereign government, we shall not allow Hezbollah forces to remain any longer on the borders of the state of Israel,” he said, adding that Israel was “changing the rules of the game entirely.”

If Olmert truly plans to stick to the demands he outlined to Annan, then his success will depend largely on the stamina of the Israeli public in withstanding ongoing Hezbollah rocket attacks and his ability to parry mounting international pressure to cease the aerial bombardment of Beirut and to lift the sea and air blockade Israel has imposed on Lebanon.

For now, the Israeli leader has strong public backing for what he is doing in Lebanon. With Israel having withdrawn to the internationally recognised border with Lebanon in mid-2000 – it occupied a narrow buffer zone for 18 years in south Lebanon – many Israelis view the Hezbollah attack as an unforgivable violation of their sovereignty that must be severely punished.

But there is a limit to how long Olmert can keep the residents of northern Israel in their bomb shelters. Since Israeli planes bombed Beirut airport early Thursday morning, Hezbollah has been peppering northern Israel with dozens of rocket salvos.

Four people have been killed, including a woman in the northern town of Nahariya who was sipping coffee on her balcony when her apartment building was hit by a rocket on Thursday, and a woman and her five-year-old grandson who were killed in their home on Friday.

By Friday evening, Hezbollah had fired some 200 rockets, hitting 30 towns and injuring dozens of people. The conflagration has already extinguished any tourism in the area and the longer Israel’s offensive continues, the more residents in the north will feel the economic pinch.

Olmert’s resolve to see through his strategy will likely have been fortified by a rocket attack on Haifa, Israel’s third largest city and the southernmost point a rocket fired from Lebanon has ever struck in Israel.

Shortly after the rockets slammed into the northern coastal town on Thursday evening, Israeli planes dropped leaflets over Beirut, warning residents to keep clear of areas where Hezbollah members lived and operated. Several hours later, planes struck a Hezbollah stronghold in a residential area in south Beirut.

On Friday night, Israel bombed the home and headquarters of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in southern Beirut, prompting the Hezbollah chief to declare “open war” on Israel.

He threatened to strike “beyond Haifa,” and said his group had attacked an Israeli naval vessel off the Lebanese coast, that it was burning and would sink with “scores of Israeli Zionist soldiers.” Al Jazeera television said four Israeli sailors were missing. The Israeli military would only say that the vessel had been badly damaged, most likely by an explosives-laden drone.

International criticism of the Israeli operation has begun to mount. French President Jacques Chirac castigated Israel on Friday for a “completely disproportionate” response to the Hezbollah attack. The French leader wondered “whether there isn’t a sort of desire to destroy Lebanon.”

The European Union condemned “the loss of civilian lives and the destruction of civilian infrastructure (in Lebanon).”

But Olmert will have drawn encouragement from the backing of U.S. President George Bush, who described the Hezbollah attack as a “pathetic” attempt to derail peace in the Middle East.

A White House spokesman said Friday that Bush would not pressure Olmert to end the offensive in Lebanon. Asked whether the president had received a request from Lebanon to pressure Israel to halt the operation, White House spokesman Tony Snow said, “No. The president is not going to make military decisions for Israel.”

The U.S. is said to be concerned, though, that an ongoing Israeli operation in Lebanon could undermine the establishment of the new government in Beirut, in the wake of Syria’s ousting from Lebanon. U.S. officials have communicated this concern to Israel.

Security officials say Israel is likely to demand the creation of a Hezbollah-free “buffer zone” in south Lebanon in exchange for a ceasefire. But this would unlikely bear any resemblance to the zone Israel occupied in south Lebanon until six years ago.

That 18-year experience, during which Hezbollah regularly inflicted losses on Israeli forces patrolling the zone, has made Israeli leaders extremely reticent to again commit ground forces in Lebanon. So far, Israel’s military operation has been conducted almost entirely from the air – naval vessels off the Lebanese coast have also been used to shell targets – and the bitter memory of the security zone is likely to ensure it remains that way.

Some ministers have suggested that Israel also strike targets in Syria, which along with Iran has long backed Hezbollah. But Olmert has declined this advice. With Israel already embroiled in a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, triggered when Palestinian militants abducted an Israeli soldier on Jun. 25, he is not keen to open up a third front.

Hezbollah chief Nasrallah has proven in the past that he is a stubborn, determined negotiator, willing to engage in long, drawn-out talks over prisoner swaps. As time moves on, and the soldiers are not returned, will Olmert be able to withstand the inevitable public pressure to “bring the boys back home”?

And is there any chance that Israel’s offensive will force the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah and deploy its forces in the south? History is not on Olmert’s side. The Lebanese government has long been weak and unable to impose its will on Hezbollah. What is more, Israeli offensives in the past have only boosted support for Hezbollah as civilian casualties have inevitably mounted.

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