Israel agreed late Sunday to suspend aerial attacks in southern Lebanon for up to 48 hours after one of its air strikes killed more than 50 civilians, most of them children, triggering an international outcry and intensifying pressure on the U.S. to support calls for an immediate cease-fire.
But Israel made clear that the agreement did not amount to a cease-fire and said the suspension would last only as long as it takes for the army to conduct an inquiry into the air strike on the town of Qana.
“Only targets that are about to attack Israeli targets will be hit, and this will be the case until the full IDF [Israel Defense Forces] inquiry is concluded,” an Israeli statement said.
The suspension, announced after intensive talks between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Israeli officials, is a significant concession from Israel, which has repeatedly said it will not halt its military operations until Hezbollah is disarmed and driven from Israel’s northern border.
But the strike undermined the U.S. diplomatic efforts toward a permanent solution. Rice’s planned visit to Beirut was canceled after the strike, and she announced plans to return to Washington on Monday, only two days after returning to the region.
A U.S. statement, differing slightly in wording from the Israeli one, said the suspension would last a full 48 hours. During that period, which began at midnight Sunday, Israel also will coordinate with the United Nations “to allow a 24-hour period of safe passage for all residents of south Lebanon who wish to leave,” according to the U.S. statement, issued by State Department spokesman Adam Ereli in Jerusalem.
But the suspension fell short of Lebanon’s demand for an immediate and total cease-fire to end the 20-day-old conflict, which has claimed the lives of more than 700 Lebanese and 51 Israelis. Israel reserved the right to continue artillery attacks on southern Lebanon and also ground incursions.
“We are not talking about a cease-fire or about other activity. We are talking about aerial activity. It only pertains to aerial activity,” said an Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The 1 a.m. air strike on Qana collapsed a three-story building where dozens of people had taken shelter on the ground floor from the bombardments that have turned much of southern Lebanon into a wasteland.
Broadcasts enrage Arab world
Throughout the day, scenes of rescue workers pulling the bodies of women and children from the rubble played on satellite television channels across the region, stirring outrage in Lebanon and across the Arab world.
By nightfall, rescuers had retrieved the bodies of 27 people, 19 of them children, according to the Lebanese Red Cross. Ten injured people were pulled out alive, and a Red Cross spokesman said there were up to 30 people still buried beneath the rubble, including 11 children.
In a rebuff to Rice, the Lebanese government responded to the bombing by telling the United States’ top diplomat that she wasn’t welcome in Lebanon unless the U.S. would support an immediate cease-fire. That forced Rice to cancel her visit to Beirut later in the day.
After speaking by telephone with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, Rice said she would remain in Jerusalem.
“My work is here,” she said, appearing deeply troubled by the turn of events. She later announced her plans to return to Washington.
In an emotional televised address, Siniora said he told Rice not to come unless she brought proposals for a cease-fire.
“There is no place on this sad morning for any discussion of anything other than an immediate cease-fire,” he said.
“Out of respect for the souls of our innocent martyrs and the remains of our children buried under the rubble, we scream to the civilized world for a cease-fire,” he added, his voice breaking.
Qana, a town of 20,000, was the site of an Israeli artillery attack in April 1996 that killed more than 100 civilians taking shelter in a UN compound. That attack prompted Israel to call off an offensive against Hezbollah.
Israel said Sunday that it regretted the deaths but blamed Hezbollah for continuing to fire missiles into Israel from southern Lebanon, including Qana.
“These women and children killed in this horrible, tragic accident may have been killed by Israeli fire, but they are the victims of Hezbollah, they are the victims of terrorism,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, told an emotional emergency session of the Security Council. “If there were no Hezbollah, this would never have happened.”
Qana is “a hub” of Hezbollah activities, he told the council, showing a video of a missile launcher firing rockets from behind an apartment building that he said was similar to the one that was struck.
“When you sleep with a missile, sometimes you don’t wake up in the morning,” he said.
Israel had dropped leaflets over the area warning civilians to leave Qana “because Hezbollah turned it into a war zone,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir said.
“One must understand that Hezbollah is using their own civilian population as human shields,” he said.
In Washington, President Bush said the situation in the Middle East “is a reminder that all of us must work together to achieve a sustainable peace. America mourns the loss of innocent life.”
In the virtually abandoned town of Qana, survivors of the strike said the victims belonged to families too poor to afford the high prices being charged by taxi drivers to brave the repeatedly bombed roads leading from their villages.
“Most of the people who died are poor people who are tobacco or grain farmers,” said Mohammed Shalhoub, 30, who lost his uncle, his aunt, several cousins and a sister-in-law in the attack. “They could not afford to leave or did not want to leave because they were attached to their land.”
The strike that brought down the building was among what residents described as an onslaught of overnight air strikes that destroyed eight other structures.
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Standing next to the rubble, Zeinab Shalhoub, 66, wept for the family members she lost in the strike as Chinese engineers from the UN observer force in southern Lebanon used earth-moving equipment to dig through the piles of concrete and twisted steel.
“What crimes did the children commit? May God punish the Israelis!” she wailed.
Despite the outcry, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel needed 10 to 14 more days to complete its goal of eliminating Hezbollah as a military force.
“We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents this morning,” Olmert told ministers at his weekly Cabinet meeting, a senior official said. “We will continue the activity, and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation.”
The rebuff to Rice from Lebanon’s government, which she has repeatedly hailed as a model of democracy in the Middle East, further isolates the U.S. in the region alongside Israel. America’s other Arab allies have thrown their weight behind the cease-fire calls.
European and other world leaders also support a cease-fire, leaving only Britain in support of the United States. But Prime Minister Tony Blair said the Qana strike emphasized the need for a swift UN resolution that would establish a cease-fire.
“We have to speed this entire process up and get a resolution now, and then the hostilities have got to stop,” he said in London.
The Qana strike was not the first in which large numbers of civilians have died in the current conflict. More than 50 died in Srifa in a similar strike in the first week of the war.
But the media are gathered in large numbers in southern Lebanon, and pictures of the destruction were beamed quickly around the world. And with the civilian death toll rising, attitudes have hardened in Lebanon and elsewhere against what is perceived as a disproportionate use of force by Israel.
The attack further solidified Lebanese support for Hezbollah, the Shiite movement branded a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Israel. Its abduction of two Israeli soldiers July 12 triggered the crisis.
Siniora, who initially distanced himself from the militant group, thanked Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah for his “efforts” and paid tribute to the Hezbollah fighters holding out against Israel’s incursions into south Lebanon.
“I also thank all those who sacrifice their lives for the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon,” he said at a gathering of ambassadors summoned to his office.
As word of the Qana attack spread through Beirut, thousands of angry protesters attacked the UN building in downtown Beirut, smashing windows and destroying furniture.
Many of the protesters came from Beirut’s mostly Shiite southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold. They waved Hezbollah flags and shouted slogans supporting Nasrallah. “Our blood and our souls for you, Nasrallah,” they chanted. “The army of Muhammad is coming; look out Israel.”
Non-Shiites express solidarity
But Christians, Sunnis and Druze also attended in an unusual show of solidarity with the Shiite Islamist movement.
“We are Christians, and we are with Hezbollah on this,” said Abir Naame, 25, a Christian music student from Tannourine, north of Beirut.
“We are all Lebanese, and it is our children, our fathers who are being killed every day while the U.S. just keeps giving more weapons to Israel,” she said.
Israeli officials said 156 rockets were fired into Israel on Sunday, but no one was killed. The Israeli army said it continued its ground incursions into southern Lebanon, operating in the villages of Kafr Kila, Al-Adeisa and Tayba, not far from the border. A dozen soldiers were wounded and three Hezbollah were killed in exchanges of fire, the army said.
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