Israel Stays Its Hand To Give Talks a Chance

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel is softening its military fight against Hezbollah to allow cease-fire negotiations at the United Nations, holding off for now on a large-scale ground invasion while peace talks take place in New York over the next few days.While more than 7,000 Israeli troops are fighting house to house in about 20 villages and towns along the Israel-Lebanon border, three divisions, or approximately 40,000 soldiers, are idle in the Galilee, waiting for instructions from Jerusalem to launch the full ground invasion of southern Lebanon that Prime Minister Olmert announced Monday of last week.Defense Minister Amir Peretz, a former union leader and head of the Labor Party, told the Knesset yesterday, “I gave an order that, if within the coming days the diplomatic process does not reach a conclusion, Israeli forces will carry out the operations necessary to take control of Katyusha rocket-launching sites in every location.”While a full ground invasion is on hold, the air campaign against Hezbollah targets and infrastructure has not halted, despite its failure to stop the rain of rockets on northern Israel. Hezbollah escalated its attacks yesterday, sending an unmanned drone into northern Israel after launching medium-range rockets into Haifa on Sunday.Israel now appears to be seeking to accomplish through diplomacy what its military so far has been unable or unwilling to accomplish on the battle field. The predicament is usually one associated with the Arabs when fighting Israel. And the confidence Israel’s leaders are placing on a multinational force and a U.N. cease-fire to protect the country from Hezbollah has drawn loud protests from Israeli politicians.“It is the political level that has to give the instructions to the military,” a former Israeli defense minister, Moshe Arens, said. “The government made a serious mistake in not launching a ground offensive on the first day. To the best of my knowledge, there is no major ground offensive right now, and the impression I get is that they are looking at the U.N.Security Council for direction.”Mr. Peretz was careful to say the diplomatic process at Turtle Bay was working in parallel to — not determining — the Jewish state’s military operations. But other Israel Defense Force officials are saying the original goal of disarming Hezbollah will be left to a future multinational force or the Lebanese army.“There is a whole array of diplomatic considerations right now,” an IDF official said, on condition of anonymity. “The operation is not limited to tactical gains that can be made on the ground. That is one of the considerations. It is certainly not the only one. The army is well aware of it. We are there until there is a diplomatic or political solution. The end of this military operation is a diplomatic arrangement.”The fate of two cease-fire resolutions — one to stop the fighting, another to create a multinational force capable of keeping peace in the south — is unclear. Yesterday, Arab foreign ministers meeting in Beirut demanded that the draft resolution backed by France and America call for Israel to withdraw its troops immediately from Lebanon.Prime Minister Siniora said his government was ready to send 15,000 soldiers from the national army to the south.A senior IDF official who requested anonymity said the military was anxious to “study the details of the Lebanese proposal.” The official said that in the next three days, the IDF would hold off on a large-scale invasion to “wait and give a chance to diplomacy.”A former Likud chairman of the Knesset’s defense and foreign affairs committee and current member of that committee, Yuval Steinitz, said he was puzzled by the government’s “reluctance” to commit to a wider assault.“The government decided to call up three ground divisions,” Mr. Steinitz said. “This was made due to pressure from the defense and foreign affairs committee, not just to operate in Lebanon, but to be on high alert in the Golan Heights.”“Most of the three divisions are waiting, some are exercising, some are waiting to defend against the Syrians in the Golan. They are simply waiting in the Galilee,” he added.One IDF official, however, dismissed the threat to the Golan Heights, territory that Israel won from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. But a former senior IDF officer still working with the military said Hezbollah may be trying to draw Syria into the conflict by lobbing Katyusha rockets into the Golan Heights, hoping an Israeli response would land in Syrian territory.Mr. Olmert said last month that Israel had no plans to attack Syria. Nonetheless, the Syrians have been on high alert along the border since the second week of the current war.Meanwhile, the prospect of a premature cease-fire is worrying one Iraqi politician who was kicked out of his political party in 2004 for visiting Israel and then telling Arab reporters about it.“Hezbollah, in my point of view, is a terrorist organization. They are the long arm of Iranian strategy. We have the same thing here,” Mithal al-Alusi, a member of the Iraqi parliament, said Sunday. “We have the problem from Iran and Syria. The Israelis would make a huge mistake if they do not finish the job. If they do not finish the job our enemies will be stronger.”

Israel Stays Its Hand To Give Talks a Chance

Israel Stays Its Hand To Give Talks a Chance

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