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MIDEAST: No Early End to Conflict in Sight

Analysis by Peter Hirschberg

JERUSALEM, Jul 28 2006 (IPS) - With U.S. and European leaders unable to agree on the conditions for a ceasefire, the Israeli cabinet authorising the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, and Hezbollah still firing dozens of rockets into Israel every day, an end to hostilities did not look near as Israel’s offensive against the Shia organisation in Lebanon entered its 16th day Friday.

With U.S. and European leaders unable to agree on the conditions for a ceasefire, the Israeli cabinet authorising the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists, and Hezbollah still firing dozens of rockets into Israel every day, an end to hostilities did not look near as Israel’s offensive against the Shia organisation in Lebanon entered its 16th day Friday.

In Rome on Wednesday, where U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met European leaders in a bid to hammer out a ceasefire plan, the divide between the U.S. and the Europeans was on display for all to see as the conference ended in disagreement.

While European leaders want an immediate cessation of hostilities, the United States is opposing an unconditional ceasefire, insisting this would simply reinstate a situation in which Hezbollah gunmen still operate unhindered along the Lebanese border with Israel.

“That means that we have to help the parties establish conditions that will make it possible for an early ceasefire that, nonetheless, does not return us to the status quo,” Rice said Friday. “I think everybody in Rome agreed that we can’t return to the circumstances that led us to this in the first place.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is strongly opposed to an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, believing it would fail to address the threat posed by Hezbollah, which used the six years after Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon to deploy some 12,000 rockets in south Lebanon facing Israel.

The Israeli leader is also concerned that with rockets fired by Hezbollah militants still raining down on towns across northern Israel, an immediate ceasefire would be interpreted by the Shia organisation – and throughout the Arab world – as a victory for it and a severe blow to Israel’s deterrent capacity.

Israeli leaders have interpreted the outcome of the Rome conference as a green light to press ahead with the offensive against Hezbollah. “We received…at the Rome conference permission from the world…to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah won’t be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed,” said Israeli justice minister Haim Ramon.

But European Union leaders were quick to react, saying Israel had misinterpreted the summit’s final declaration, which called for a United Nations force to be deployed in southern Lebanon to assist the Lebanese government in implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which calls for the disarming of Hezbollah.

Finnish foreign minister Erkki Tumioja, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, said Israel’s understanding that it received the okay in Rome to continue with its offensive was “their own and wrong interpretation.” A spokesman for Rice called the statements by Ramon “outrageous.”

Rice is now pushing a new initiative that includes the deployment of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces in south Lebanon, to ensure that Hezbollah is disarmed, and an Israeli withdrawal from the Shebaa Farms area, with the strip of border territory being handed over to the Lebanese government.

The United Nations determined that the Shebaa area was Syrian territory when Israel withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000, but Hezbollah insists it is Lebanese territory and claims it is one of the reasons why it continues to carry out cross-border attacks on Israeli forces.

The U.S. proposal also calls for the NATO force to be given powers of enforcement and for the creation of a no-go area for Hezbollah that would stretch 20 kilometres from the Israeli border northward into Lebanon.

After initially dismissing the idea of an international peacekeeping force as an idea that was still “too early” to discuss, Olmert reversed his views last week and began expressing readiness to accept a multinational force in south Lebanon.

He wants to ensure, though, that the force has sufficient firepower to keep Hezbollah from re-entering south Lebanon and that it will be willing to use it, unlike the UN force currently stationed in the area which has been ineffective in stopping Hezbollah attacks across the border. He also wants the force to prevent the transport of weapons across the Syrian border to Hezbollah.

Tensions between Israel and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan were running high this week after four UN troops were killed when an Israeli missile struck their post in south Lebanon Tuesday. Relations will not have been improved by Israel’s announcement late Thursday that it was against any UN involvement in a future peacekeeping force.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, said Thursday that a new multinational force in south Lebanon would have to be better trained than the current force. “It has never been able to prevent any shelling of Israel, any terrorist attack, any kidnappings,” he said. “They either didn’t see or didn’t know or didn’t want to see, but they have been hopeless.”

Gillerman, who apologised for the strike on the UN outpost, calling it a “mistake”, added that “obviously it cannot be a United Nations force. It will have to be an international force, a professional one, with soldiers from countries who have the training and capabilities to be effective.”

Britain and France both said Friday they would be pressing for a new UN resolution to end the hostilities. But fighting continued Friday, with Israel targeting the area around the city of Tyre in south Lebanon, from where it says rocket fire is being directed, and Hezbollah raining down rockets on towns in northern Israel.

Rice, though, did not seem in any particular rush to get back to the Middle East. “Let me be very clear,” she said Friday in Malaysia, where she has been attending a conference on Asian issues. “I’m going to return to the Middle East. The question is, when is it right for me to return to the Middle East.”