Israel
Prepares To Launch
Ground War In Lebanon
By Mike Head
24 July 2006
World
Socialist Web
With
Washington’s backing, Israel is preparing to launch a ground invasion
of Lebanon, having called up thousands of army reservists and massed
tanks and armoured personnel carriers on the border.
In ten days of bombings,
Israel has already killed more than 350 civilians, driven half a million
people from their homes and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure.
Now it plans to intensify its offensive to subjugate southern Lebanon.
The American television network
CNBC reported that, according to intelligence sources, an Israeli ground
invasion was imminent. A military source said more than 3,000 reservists
had been called up. Israeli Army Radio said the drive could involve
six battalions, which might mean up to 6,000 soldiers. Such a force
would be one of the biggest assembled by Israel since it invaded Lebanon
in 1982.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF)
Chief of Staff Dan Halutz told reporters in Tel Aviv on Friday that
any military incursion into Lebanon would be “limited” in
scope but could last for “weeks.”
Israel’s Kadima-Labor
government is proceeding with the clear backing of the Bush administration,
with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice rejecting renewed calls for
a ceasefire so as to give the Israeli military more time to carry through
its plans.
Israel dropped leaflets across
southern Lebanon warning civilians to leave towns and villages “immediately”
and head north toward Beirut. The Israelis have been using radio broadcasts,
combined with intimidating late-night telephone recordings and text
messages, to urge residents to flee beyond the Litani River, which flows
20-40 kilometres north of the Israeli border.
Families with possessions
packed into cars and pickup trucks clogged roads to the north. An estimated
300,000 mostly Shia Muslim Lebanese normally reside south of the Litani.
It is impossible to estimate how many have already fled the bombing
and fighting of the past 10 days.
Air raids have wrecked many
roads and bridges in the region and continue to do so even as people
try to flee. IDF spokesmen said humanitarian escape corridors would
be established, but Israel Air Force (IAF) warplanes pounded the country’s
main road link to Syria with missiles and set three passenger buses
ablaze on Friday, Lebanese police said. In the mountains of central
Lebanon on the Beirut-Damascus highway Friday, IAF jets fired four missiles
into a bridge linking two steep mountain peaks. Part of the bridge collapsed,
after having been hit several times previously by Israeli bombs. The
passenger buses set on fire were at Taanayel in the Bekaa Valley, about
15 kilometres from the Syrian border, on the Beirut-Damascus road.
The IDF call-up came a day
after Defence Minister Amir Peretz, the leader of the Labor Party, spoke
of a possible land offensive. “Let no terror organisation feel
we would cower from any operation,” he said. “We have no
intention of conquering Lebanon, but if we have to act to complete our
tasks and reach a victory we will do it.”
The Israeli general commanding
the forces fighting on the Lebanese front made clear that the offensive
would continue, regardless of the civilian toll. “We must change
our way of thinking. Human life is of supreme value, but this is a demanding
operation, and we are at war,” Major General Udi Adam declared
in remarks shown on Israeli television. “War costs human lives—look
how many civilians have been killed. I suggest we don’t count
the dead until it’s all over.”
According to a report in
the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the ground war had already commenced
when the IDF sent thousands of troops into southern Lebanon on Thursday.
The Israeli army also confirmed some of its troops had been operating
in Lebanon for days.
An official from the United
Nations monitoring force in south Lebanon told the Associated Press
in Beirut that between 300 and 500 Israeli troops were believed to be
in the western sector of south Lebanon, backed by as many as 30 tanks.
These operations, purportedly seeking Hezbollah positions, rocket stores
and bunkers, have faced serious resistance. Five IDF soldiers were killed
on Thursday, one of them in a collision between two Israeli helicopters.
US Secretary of State Rice
effectively gave the green light for a prolonged onslaught. There were
no “quick fixes” to the crisis, she said, and once again
blamed Hezbollah and its supporters for plunging the entire Middle East
into war. “It is unacceptable to have a situation where the decision
of a terrorist group can drag an entire country, even an entire region,
into violence,” she said.
Rice said that an immediate
ceasefire would be a “false promise” unless the “root
cause” of the violence was addressed. By root cause, Washington
does not mean Israel’s long history of terrorism and annexation,
but the resistance of the Arab masses and the support for Hezbollah
from Syria and Iran.
To head off calls at the
United Nations Security Council for an end to the hostilities, Rice
announced that she would depart on Monday for a round of diplomacy that
will include visits to Israel and Italy. She will hold talks with Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Habbas, but pointedly excluded Syria from her program, and also Lebanon,
whose prime minister, Fouad Siniora, has pleaded for an immediate ceasefire
to halt the destruction of his country.
Although the Lebanese army
has stayed out of the fighting so far, some 20 Lebanese soldiers have
been killed in Israeli strikes on their bases.
IAF planes stepped up the
bombardment of south Lebanon on Friday, particularly a border region
where Israeli soldiers and guerrillas fought pitched battles on Thursday
evening. A house in the border town of Aitaroun was flattened, with
10 people believed inside, but rescue workers could not reach it because
of artillery shelling, security officials said.
The heightened shelling intensified
the humanitarian disaster across the region. “The siege on Lebanon
is not letting humanitarian aid in,” said Hisham Hassan, spokesman
for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). “The
south is isolated,” he added.
Two ICRC trucks were on their
way from Beirut to a hospital in Tyre, where staff began burying corpses
temporarily in a mass grave dug in an army barracks to clear space in
the morgue.
Israeli forces have also
continued their attacks in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours. Israeli
tank fire hit the home of a Hamas militant, killing him and three members
of his family, according to Palestinian security officials.
Thousands of demonstrators
across the Middle East used Friday’s Islamic day of prayer to
again protest Israel’s attacks and the complicity of Arab leaders
who have denounced Hezbollah and refused to condemn Israel. Thousands
gathered after the main weekly religious service at Al-Azhar Mosque
in Cairo, Egypt. In Jordan, some 2,000 protesters marched in downtown
Amman.
There were also more antiwar
demonstrations in Israel, with a major protest planned for Tel Aviv
today.