IT ALL looked so promising in Jerusalem late on Sunday night. Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, met Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister. Then, around midnight, her press secretary issued a statement announcing that Israel had agreed to halt its airstrikes for 48 hours while it investigated the bombing earlier in the day of the Lebanese village of Qana, in which 37 children were killed.
After three weeks of relentless Israeli attacks, the announcement appeared to be the first sign of Israel’s readiness to bow to the international clamour for an end to the bloodshed. It made headlines around the world yesterday morning.
What nobody paid much attention to was the rare silence on Sunday night from Israel’s normally loquacious spokesmen. They went to ground. They turned off their phones. There was not a word from either Mr Olmert’s office or the Foreign Ministry.
At 10.30am yesterday, Dr Rice flew back to Washington talking optimistically of an “emerging consensus on what is necessary for both an urgent ceasefire and a lasting settlement”. She continued: “I am convinced we can achieve both this week.”
Dr Rice had evidently misread — or not read at all — the hostile reaction in the Israeli media to the Government’s concession the previous night.
“Olmert folded” proclaimed the headline in the mass- circulation newspaper Yediot Ahronoth. Alex Fishman, a military analyst, wrote: “Hezbollah continues to fire, stands on its feet, and Israel is alarmed and folds in the face of pressure.”
The Government was attacked from left and right. Yuval Steinitz, a Likud MP, said that the concession would make Israel look weak and be perceived internationally as an admission of Israeli guilt for the civilian deaths.
Dr Rice’s optimism proved short-lived. Within an hour of her departure, Amir Peretz, the Defence Minister, went before the Israeli parliament. Far from talking peace, he vowed to intensify the war.
“The army will expand and deepen its actions against Hezbollah,” he told a special session of the Knesset. “We cannot agree to an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon because then we will find ourselves in a few months in a similar situation.”
In New York, a meeting of countries that were considering contributing troops to an international stabilisation force was postponed for lack of “political clarity”. The force was the cornerstone of a peace deal on which the UN Security Council was supposed to vote this week. To underscore Israel’s defiance of international opinion, Mr Olmert declared last night: “The fighting is continuing . . . There is no ceasefire and there will be no ceasefire in coming days.”
He added: “We will pursue Hezbollah at any place and at any time and we will not permit it to regain its capacities . . . We are paying a high and sad price in human lives, in destruction [but] we will not renounce our right to live normally without the threat of terrorism.”
Mr Olmert’s defiance is rooted in rock-solid domestic support. Polls show 80-95 per cent support for continued strikes, with no evidence that the Qana killings or last week’s bombing of a UN observer post caused a flicker of the needle. Overwhelmingly Israelis have internalised their Government’s portrayal of the conflict as an existential one: Hezbollah as the proxy of Iran’s mullahs, determined to exterminate the Jewish people.
Ordinary Israelis questioned by The Times yesterday were adamant that the offensive should continue. “Israel is totally justified,” said Yoni Azuli, 26, in Jerusalem. “Hezbollah launched an unprovoked attack. The only language they understand is power. Certainly we can’t stop now.”
The truce resulted in a lull in the cross-border bombardment, but not a complete halt.
On at least one section of the border, Israeli forces continued to trade fire with Hezbollah. An F16 launched a strike on a Lebanese village, while land batteries fired hundreds of artillery rounds into southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah fired only a handful of mortars at the border town of Kiryat Shemona.
The Israeli bombing reflected a loophole in the ceasefire announcement granting Israel the right “to take action against targets preparing attack”. This was interpreted as licence to bomb suspected Hezbollah rocket launchers.
Meanwhile last night, Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was due to meet his French counterpart Philippe Douste-Blazy in Beirut.
ISRAELI VIEWS
“The Israel Defence Forces is the most moral army in the world”
Eli Yishai, Trade and Industry Minister
“We Won't Fold”
Ma’ariv newspaper
“We are not hesitating, apologising or relenting. If the rocket fire at Israel continues from Qana, we will continue to bomb Qana. Today, tomorrow, the day after that. Here, there and everywhere. The children of Qana could be sleeping peacefully in their homes now, if the messengers of Satan had not taken over their land and turned our children’s lives into hell”
Ben Caspit, Ma’ariv
“Every air force sortie was just asking for an on-camera tragedy like the one at Qana yesterday. It was just a question of time and it is clear that the tragedy is playing into the hands of Hezbollah”
Nadav Eyal, Ma’ariv
Ehud Olmert today faces the first real test of his leadership since the outbreak of the war in Lebanon. Will he panic in the face of the international media lynching over the deaths of civilians at Qana, and order a halt to the war, or will he keep his composure and continue with the military action until its political aims are achieved. Ten years ago a panic-stricken Shimon Peres ordered an immediate halt to Operation Grapes of Wrath [after the first Qana disaster]. In the end, the convoluted agreements reached with Hezbollah then were the root cause of the present fighting
Hagai Huberman, Hatzofe newspaper
“I’m staying. I have more chance of winning the lottery than being hit by a Katyusha [missile]. We are suffering too much from Hezbollah. They should get in there, finish the whole thing and get it done once and for all”
Freddy Masika, lottery kiosk operator in Kiryat Shemona
“I think the war’s a necessary evil. It needs to happen to make the border safe. Unfortunately the ‘evil’ is innocents getting hurt. But I blame Hezbollah for that”
Stephen Smith, a broker
A DAY OF CONFUSION
Midnight (Israeli time) State Department spokesman announces 48-hour suspension of Israeli airstrikes
08.15 Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, gives an optimistic briefing at Jerusalem hotel
10.30 Condoleezza Rice flies out of Tel Aviv
11.15 Amir Peretz, the Israeli Defence Minister, tells parliament that Israel will “expand and deepen its actions”, claiming: “If an immediate ceasefire is declared, these extremists will raise their heads anew”
15.15 UN meeting to plan a new peace-keeping force for Lebanon postponed indefinitely until there is “more political clarity” on how to end hostilities
19:30 Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, says that there will be no ceasefire “within the next few days”. Mr Olmert tells a meeting in Tel Aviv: “The fighting is continuing. There is no ceasefire and there will be no ceasefire in the coming days”
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