The Lebanese government approved the deal Saturday, and Nasrallah signaled
grudging acceptance, but also warned that "the war has not ended." On Sunday,
Hezbollah fired more than 150 rockets at northern Israel, killing an Israeli
man.
In the Cabinet meeting, Olmert praised the cease-fire agreement approved by
the
U.N. Security Council, saying it will prevent a return to the status
quo in which Hezbollah ran a state-within-a-state in south Lebanon, participants
said.
Vice Premier Shimon Peres said that while Israel has to learn lessons from
the war, "in my view, we came out of this with the upper hand, both politically
and military."
The deal was seen at best as a draw with Hezbollah, and some felt Israel -
unable to subdue a guerrillas force - had lost.
Neither the Lebanese army nor U.N. forces can be counted on to challenge
Hezbollah and prevent the
Iran-supplied guerrillas from rearming,
military experts and commentators said.
The deal buys a period of calm, at best, and sets the region up for the next
war with Tehran's proxy army, critics said. The truce will be "a time-out until
the next confrontation, and maybe not even this," commentator Nahum Barnea wrote
in Israel's Yediot Ahronot daily.
The Cabinet session was overshadowed by rising Israeli casualties.
Twenty-four soldiers were killed Saturday and at least 73 wounded.
Hezbollah appeared to be fighting as fiercely as ever. The guerrillas shot
down an Israeli helicopter, a first in the war, and killed five crew members.
Other troops were killed by Hezbollah anti-tank missiles. The army said it
killed more than 50 Hezbollah fighters.
The violence has claimed more than 900 lives: at least 763 in Lebanon —
mostly civilians_ and 147 Israelis, including 109 soldiers. On Saturday, 19
Lebanese civilians were killed in Israeli air raids, one of which blasted a
highway near the last open border crossing to Syria.
Lebanon's Cabinet said Israel's military push presented a "flagrant
challenge" to the international community after the U.N. resolution was issued.
President Bush had an 8-minute phone call Saturday with Lebanese Prime
Minister Fuad Saniora to discuss the truce. The White House said it is
determined to vanquish the hold of Hezbollah - and that of its Syrian and
Iranian benefactors - on the south.
"These steps are designed to stop Hezbollah from acting as a state within a
state, and put an end to Iran and Syria's efforts to hold the Lebanese people
hostage to their own extremist agenda," Bush said.
The anti-Syrian Saniora, whose government was extremely weak when the
fighting began, appears to have emerged from the crisis considerably
strengthened. He prevailed in his insistence that policing of the cease-fire be
done by Lebanese soldiers as well as the U.N. force.
French President Jacques Chirac has said his nation was ready to contribute
troops to the U.N. force. Other nations, including Italy and New Zealand, also
have offered soldiers.
Israelis frustrated by ceasefire move
Despite being bombarded by Hizbollah rockets for weeks, civilians in northern
Israel expressed anger and frustration on Sunday as Israel agreed to a
U.N.-brokered truce to end weeks of fighting.
Residents, many of whom have spent a month living in bomb shelters to avoid
rockets that have killed 40 civilians, said they wanted Israel's army to hit the
Lebanese guerrilla group harder and not end the war in a position of perceived
weakness.
"We haven't reached our targets," said Ron Goldman, a contractor in the town
of Sdeh Eliezer, where many people have fled to avoid rockets fired by
Hizbollah.
"A ceasefire as things are now will make Hizbollah stronger and Israel
weaker. If we already went in, then we need to finish the job," he said.
Despite the U.N. Security Council's unanimous call on Friday for an end to
the hostilities, Israeli troops continued offensive operations inside Lebanon on
Sunday and Hizbollah launched more rockets into Israel, killing one person.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Saturday that he had received
assurances from Israel and Lebanon that a ceasefire would be implemented from
0500 GMT on Monday.
But residents of the north, where most of the 3,500 Hizbollah rockets fired
in the month-long conflict have landed, said the imminent truce was no cause for
celebration.
"I don't feel any safer," said Igor Marchib, a 24-year-old from Safed, a town
about 15 km (10 miles) from the Lebanese border which has been struck repeatedly
by rocket fire.
"I don't know if we failed or succeeded, and that's not good," he said of
Israel's campaign, which has seen about 30,000 troops sent in to southern
Lebanon, with the loss of at least 104 soldiers and hundreds more wounded.
On the Lebanese side, Israeli air strikes and bombardments have killed more
than 1,000 people, most of them civilians.
