As many as 32 people, including 31 in Lebanon and one in Israel, died Tuesday in the day's fighting.

Rockets launched from Lebanon by Hezbollah militants killed one person in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, while other rockets struck Haifa, Israel's third-largest city.

Israeli warplanes bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut, considered a Hezbollah stronghold, while nine members of a family were killed in an air strike in the village of Aitaroun, according to Lebanese officials.

Ten others were killed in other attacks in the south and the Bekaa Valley.

Israeli warplanes also fired missiles at an army base in the area of Kfar Chima as soldiers were heading for bomb shelters, Lebanese security officials said. Eleven soldiers were reportedly killed and 30 wounded.

The officials, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the base took a direct hit. The base has a unit that focuses on logistics and military engineering.

A man driving a truck carrying medical supplies from the United Arab Emirates was also killed.

Tanks move into Gaza

Late Tuesday, Israel said its tanks had moved into the Mughazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

No casualties have been reported and it's not clear how long the operation might last.

Palestinian militants have been holding an Israeli soldier since June 25, when he was taken following a raid on an Israeli military post inside Israel.

Israel amassed tanks and troops along the Gaza border three days after Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, was seized.

Israeli planes have hit a number of Palestinian targets, including the Hamas offices and power stations, cutting off electricity to some of the 1.2 million people in the disputed territory.

Most of the victims are civilians

The violence in Lebanon has killed more than 200 people in Lebanon and at least 25 Israelis, most of them civilians. A family of eight Canadians visiting Lebanon was killed on Sunday.

Israel's military operation was triggered when the Lebanese-based Hezbollah militants attacked an Israeli army post, killing eight soldiers and seizing two more.

Along with its aerial assault, Israel has imposed a sea blockade to isolate Hezbollah and Lebanon.

In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his country would continue its offensive against Lebanon until its captured soldiers are released and Hezbollah stops launching rockets at Israeli towns and cities.

CBC's Laurie Graham reported Tuesday from Jerusalem that the Hezbollah rockets seem to be travelling a greater distance than before, raising fears about the range of the militant group's weapons.

She described Haifa as "really a community under siege," adding: "People there are feeling very nervous and very anxious. They don't know when the rockets will hit. They don't know if they are going to get hit."

Graham reported she has found support for the actions of the Israeli government.

"The people I have spoken to are feeling very determined," she said.

"They want to know how long this war is going to last and what would be victory. They are supportive of the government."

Two soldiers were killed when the militants dug under the border.

Hizbollah said it had also rocketed an Israeli air force base at Ramat David, about 35 km (22 miles) inside Israel, and the town of Nahariya. The Israeli army said no base was hit.

Despite international diplomatic efforts, there was no sign Israel or its Lebanese Shi'ite foes were ready to heed the Beirut government's pleas for an immediate halt to a war that has cost at least 292 lives in Lebanon and 25 in Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the bombardment would last "as long as necessary" to free two soldiers captured by Hizbollah guerrillas on July 12 and ensure the Shi'ite Muslim group is disarmed.

Hizbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, wants to swap the two Israeli soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinians in Israeli jails.

The fighting between Israel and the radical Islamic group Hezbollah, which entered its eighth day on Wednesday, has claimed the lives of at least 240 people in Lebanon and 25 in Israel.

The Israeli military said Wednesday it has sent troops just inside southern Lebanon to search for tunnels and weapons and launched several air strikes on Wednesday.

Among the latest casualties, according to news reports, are four members of a family and their maid in a southern Lebanese town, killed in an air strike aimed at offices used by Hezbollah.

And in a village in the south, near the city of Tyre, Israeli air strikes flattened 15 houses. Rescue crews searched for victims of the air strikes Wednesday.

In Beirut, Israel hit the southern half of the city. Residents heard a series of explosions.

Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continued Wednesday as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke over the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

The camp is near the Gaza-Israel fence across from the Palestinian town of Deir al-Balah. Israeli forces operated in the region late last week before withdrawing.

The incursion was preceded by several hours of tank movements on the Israeli side, as well as exchanges of fire between soldiers and Palestinian gunmen. Palestinian officials said a Hamas militant was seriously wounded.

Israel began a large-scale operation in Gaza on June 28, three days after Hamas-lined militants tunneled under the border and attacked an Israeli army base at a Gaza crossing, killing two soldiers and capturing a third.

Civilians are among the dozens of Palestinians who have died in the Israeli assault on Gaza, launched after an Israeli soldier was captured by Palestinian militants.

Many injured

The Israeli army said five of its soldiers were injured in the operation, which saw some 30 Israeli armoured vehicles in the camp by sunrise, residents told the Associated Press news agency.

Israel is also reported to have carried out air strikes on the camp.

An army spokeswoman said the operation aimed "to target terror infrastructure" in the camp, "as part of the ongoing effort in which one of its main targets is getting back [captured Israeli Cpl] Gilad Shalit and stop the launching of Qassam rockets," news agency AFP reported.

At least 45 Palestinians, including children, were wounded, Palestinian hospital officials said.

According to Israel Radio, Israel is also shelling sites in Gaza which were used to launch Qassam rockets over into the western Negev on Tuesday evening.

Israel launched its military offensive in the Gaza Strip three weeks ago after Cpl Shalit was abducted by militants linked to Hamas's military wing.

Its Gaza assault prompted international calls for restraint, but a UN resolution urging Israel to stop the offensive was vetoed by the United States at the Security Council last week.

Nablus 'arrests'

In its raid on Nablus, soldiers surrounded a security building in a bid to capture militants apparently hiding inside.

Three Palestinians died in exchanges of fire with the troops, who reportedly used megaphones to demand those inside the building come out.

Dozens of Palestinians were then arrested, reports said.

Hizbullah assisted Iran by taking western, especially American, hostages (under such labels as the Organization of the Oppressed of the Earth) on the basis that their captivity would inhibit US military intervention in the Iran-Iraq War on the Iraqi side. It also used American hostages as a means to secure US-made weapons, clandestinely, for Iran which had been equipped with such arms before the 1979 revolution.

After the end of the Lebanese civil war in October 1990, Hizbullah fighters moved to the area adjacent to the Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon. In late 1991 a three-way swap - involving 450 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners, seven dead or captured Israeli soldiers, and the remaining Western hostages - ended this phase of Hizbullah's hostage-taking.

Steadily, it increased its attacks on the Israeli and its surrogate South Lebanon army targets, pushing the total to 1,200 in 1998. Unable to bear the pressure, Israel withdraw unconditionally from southern Lebanon in May 2000, except from the disputed Shebaa Farms.

Soon after the start of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000, Hizbullah abducted a former Israeli colonel from inside Israel. Following tortuous negotiations, in January 2004 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon exchanged 436 Lebanese prisoners and 59 corpses of Lebanese soldiers for one Israeli hostage and three corpses of Israeli soldiers.

At the last minute Sharon held back three prominent Lebanese detainees. Since then Hizbullah has talked about getting them released by abducting Israeli soldiers. A recent poll showed that more Lebanese were interested in their release than settling the dispute about the Shebaa Farm with Israel.

Hizbullah's secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah claims that the leadership had been planning the abduction of Israeli soldiers for five months. Nonetheless, the flare-up has come at a time when Iran is under international pressure on its nuclear issue. So mayhem and diversions in the region suit Tehran. They also provide a foretaste of what would follow if Israel or America were to mount their threatened "pinpoint" strikes at Iran's nuclear and military facilities.

Yet, despite repeated Israeli and American claims that Iran and Syria are behind Hizbullah's moves, no solid evidence has emerged. That is what led French President Jacques Chirac to say that "I have the feeling, if not the conviction, that Hamas and Hizbullah would not have taken the initiative alone."

Quite simply, the alliance between Hizbullah and Iran and Syria is informal, not institutional. It is part of a broad anti-Washington, anti-Tel Aviv front led by Tehran in an international context where the legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council has collapsed in the Arab and Muslim world.

Washington's vetoing of the Qatari resolution at the Security Council - which condemned Israel for "disproportionate use of force", called for the release of the Israeli prisoner and urged the Palestinians to stop firing rockets at Israel - which won 10 votes, with four abstentions, was a glaring example of its denigration of the highest authority on international security.

"The situation in Lebanon and Palestine is a test for international organizations who claim to be defenders of human rights," said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Keeping silent won't solve any problems."

Those who now invoke Security Council Resolution 1559 of September 2004, passed by the minimum requirement of nine votes, calling on all Lebanese militias to disarm, lack moral authority. They should remember that Israel defied Security Council Resolution 425 of March 1978 demanding its unconditional withdrawal from Lebanon for 22 years.

Aljazeera.net: Israel says its assault on Lebanon is in self-defence against Hezbollah's Katyusha rocket attacks and the capture of two of its soldiers.

Hezbollah says southern Lebanon has long been an area of conflict with Israel occupying Lebanese land and that it wants indirect negotiations to secure the release of its prisoners in Israeli jails. How did the situation deteriorate so rapidly and so violently?

As'ad AbuKhalil: This particular conflict, and Israel's act of aggression on Lebanon, did not take place in a vacuum, and Israel did not act in some spontaneous fashion. 


Hezbollah did not surprise Israel with the capture of the two Israeli occupation soldiers. Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah has repeatedly warned that if Israel does not release its Lebanese prisoners, he will be compelled to take Israeli soldiers as bargaining chips.

And Israel has not been sitting idly by since its partial withdrawal from South Lebanon in 2000. It has not only continued to occupy parts of South Lebanon, but also has been violating Lebanese sovereignty, by air, sea, and land.

Israel has also been kidnapping innocent Lebanese citizens: fishermen and shepherds. And one fisherman from Tyre - my hometown - is still missing, and at least one shepherd was killed last year. 

Furthermore, Israel has adamantly refused to give to Lebanon a map of the more than 400,000 land mines that it left behind in South Lebanon, and which continue to kill Lebanese children in the region.

The recent crisis, as the article in the Washington Post by Robin Wright pointed out yesterday, is an international/regional conspiracy to implement United Nations Security Council resolution 1559. 

The groundwork for this aggression began with the work of Rafiq al-Hariri [the slain former Lebanese prime minister] in 2004, when he worked with the US and France to pass that resolution in the Security Council.

The plan has the full support of Israel and client Arab regimes of the US: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. But it will not work, and Hezbollah will not lay down its arms. 

If the Lebanese government, led by the Hariri camp, thinks that it can now convince Hezbollah to lay down its arms and to trust the Lebanese Army - which has been sitting idly over the last week - to take care of Lebanon's defence, it is wildly mistaken.

What are Israel's goals? What are Hezbollah's goals?

I think that Israel often acts in revenge. The Zionist movement is a vengeful movement; it always has been.

It wants not only to implement UNSC 1559 to disarm Hezbollah, but it also wants, as it did in 1982, to pave the way for the installation of American puppets as rulers of Lebanon. These plans never work: All grand plans for Lebanon strike the rocks of deep sectarian divisions in the country.

I think that Hezbollah started by wanting to achieve a prisoner exchange with Israel, and probably to ease the pressures on Palestine.

But now, they mostly and primarily want to retain possession of their weapons, and they have in that at least the overwhelming support of the Shia in Lebanon, the single largest sect in the country.  

Dozens of civilians have been killed on both sides but there has been little movement in the international community. Is there a feeling that mediation or efforts to bring about a ceasefire will be fruitless?

The silence of the so-called international community, which has been under the control and in the service of the US government since the end of the Cold War, has been most painful for those in Lebanon who have been told in the last two years that the international community cares about Lebanon and its people. Now people know better. 

I do believe that the same racist impulse that considers Israeli lives worth more than Arab lives is at play here. I have no doubt that the lives of Arabs never meant much for the descendants of colonial powers in the region.

And it is important that we don't allow Israeli propaganda to present an image of symmetry between the two sides: There is no symmetry between the two sides in this conflict.

Not only in terms of Israeli military superiority, but also in terms of massive killings by Israel of largely innocent civilians.

Do the Lebanese blame Hezbollah or Israel for this crisis?

I think that all Lebanese blame Israel for the killing and for the aggression. But the Saudi clients in Lebanon are trying to exploit the events to build up resentment against Hezbollah.

In Lebanon, there never are unified opinions on anything, and certainly the sectarian divisions do not amount to a unified stance behind Hezbollah. 

There are many Lebanese who don't support the ideology of Hezbollah but who also believe that the party is now single-handedly defending Lebanon against savage Israeli aggression.

John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, implicated Iran and Syria as being at least partially to blame for supporting Hezbollah...

It is ironic to speak of John Bolton - the same person who was honoured a few months ago by the Hariri ruling coalition in Lebanon.

Yes, Hezbollah receives the support of Iran and Syria, just as the Hariri coalition receives the support of US, France, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, and possibly Israel indirectly.

Will Israel attack Syria or Iran next? Could this become an all-out regional war? Could this draw the US into the conflict?

It seems that Israel will avoid attacking Iran and Syria at this stage. With the Israeli war on Palestine still proceeding unabated, the Israelis may not find a need. 

The US/EU/UN will deal with both countries, on behalf of Israel, through pressures and punitive measures.

But, if Syria and Iran come under attack, then all bets are off in the region, and US plans in Iraq will face more challenges and more subversion.

Iran has indirectly facilitated the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and Syria has recently been co-operating with the US occupation in Iraq.

If attacked, both countries can easily make things worse for the US, and that explains the reluctance of the US in endorsing attacks on Iran or Syria.

With Iraq on the verge of civil war, how will the Lebanon crisis affect the region?

It depends on what happens. If Israel is permitted to continue in the aggression, Syria and Iran may feel threatened, and that may unleash their forces in Iraq against the US. 

Under such circumstances, American troubles in the region will only increase. But no matter what happens, this carnage will have affects thoughout the Middle East. 

Let us remember that the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon unleashed seismic changes and movements in the region, including the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah. 

Those who think that when the dust settles, all will go back to normal, are people who have not read the contemporary history of the Middle East.

In the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, this Israeli aggression will go down as a watershed; it will have an impact on the course of the conflict and also on the stability of the very regimes that the US spends money and weapons to prop up.

As the main power-broker in the Middle East, what role can the US play to end the violence?

You have to be either ignorant or foolish or both to consider the US interested in ending the current conflict. The US has clearly endorsed an unconditional Israeli aggression on Lebanon and Palestine. The US will leave it to Israel to decide not only the manner of killing of Arabs, but even to determine the number of Arabs that Israel wishes to kill.

Some Arab countries have criticised Hezbollah and its backers for the recent crisis but Iran and some fighters in Iraq have firmly stood by Hezbollah. Could we see a more extensive Shia-Sunni conflict on the sidelines of an Arab-Israeli war?

Yes, the Saudis have now officially endorsed a Shia-Sunni conflict in the Middle East. And this plan has the support of the US and Israel. This can easily, however, affect stability of several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia. So trying to manipulate the Sunni-Shia divide is like playing with fire. We saw the fruits of American sectarian manipulation in Iraq.

How likely is the Lebanese government to survive the crisis?

The Hariri element of the ruling coalition will come out weaker as a result of this crisis. That seems certain. They will either be seen as incompetent, or as secret partners of the American/Israeli/Saudi plan for Lebanon.

But even at the humanitarian level, the Lebanese government has failed miserably in meeting the basic demands of the refugees. 

In recent months, there was a general feeling that Lebanon had bounced back with major economic drive and a tourism boost. How do Lebanese look at their long-term prospects now that much of what they rebuilt has been destroyed?

The Lebanese have been through a lot - the people of south Lebanon have been through scores of savage Israeli invasions and campaigns of aggression. Not only are the people known for resilience, but their ability to reconstruct and resume normal life - as much as possible - has become well known.

But the funds needed for reconstruction will come at a high price: It will be like Hariri's accruement of foreign debt which further eroded the independence and sovereignty of Lebanon.

That's right - TWO.

This stark-raving lunatic and his band of murderous thugs have destroyed an entire nation, displaced half a million people, and killed hundreds of innocent civilians so that he can secure the safety of only 2 -- that's right -- T-W-O, Israeli soldiers and to ensure compliance with a resolution that he has no authority whatsoever to enforce.


He is a murderous madman and anyone who supports him is insane.

It's still impossible to assess the ramifications of Hezbollah's prestige in the Arab street being tremendously enhanced after its military success for the past week - which include delivering missiles to the heart of Israel. But the Arab street has certainly registered the communique by the House of Saud against Hezbollah, as well as the thunderous silence-cum-embarrassment displayed by the US client regimes of Egypt and Jordan.

A certified effect of the Israeli bombing barrage will be to draw newer, thicker waves of moderate Muslims toward political - and radical - Islam. The perception in the Arab street - as well as for most of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims - has been reinforced: the US/Israel axis seems to hold a license to kill Arabs with impunity.

For its part, Israel's Leviathan-run-amok tactic of trying to turn the Lebanese as a whole against Hezbollah seems to be doomed to failure. This is especially because compounding Israel's trademark collective-punishment techniques - bombing bridges and an international airport, killing scores of civilians indiscriminately, turning Beirut into Gaza - shines President George W Bush's imperial indifference, not to mention the international community's. Just as in 1982 - when president Ronald Reagan said it was all right for Ariel Sharon to invade Lebanon - now Bush says it's all right for Israel to bomb Lebanese civilians.

Israel does not listen to anybody - be it the toothless United Nations or the even more cowardly European Union. Beirut is in panic. According to Hanady Salman, a journalist at As-Safir newspaper, the population widely expects that "as soon as the evacuation of foreigners will be completed, the Israelis will have a freer hand". Not by accident, all the areas bombed by Israel - and most of the civilians killed - are among the poorest in Lebanon.

Hezbollah is convinced it got its overall strategy right - factoring all the angles of the Leviathan-run-amok response; so there's no way the Lebanese people as a whole may blame Hezbollah for the escalation. Moreover, Hezbollah is a key force in fractured Lebanon. The majority of Lebanon's population is Shi'ite: at least 45% (in south Beirut, this correspondent was repeatedly told they may be from 55% to 60%). Christians are no more than 30%. The majority of Shi'ites - mostly poor, with very extended families, and a great deal of them basically peasants - support Hezbollah. Symbolically, fiercely independent Hezbollah represents the revenge of the oppressed - not only against the well off Sunni and Christians but against the Israeli invaders.

Hezbollah is a genuine resistance movement, such as Hamas in Palestine. Israel's military logic rules that it must crush any Arab resistance movement. Now Israel seems to have found two pretexts to try to crush simultaneously both Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel's modus operandi is to take entire populations hostage.

French social scientist Alain Joxe has demonstrated how these policies are "technical experiments" always observed with extreme interest by the Pentagon. The stateless Palestinians have been taken hostage in two giant, unconnected gulags in Gaza and the West Bank. Now the experiment - through relentless bombing - applies to a whole sovereign country. But Israel is also reaping - in the form of Hezbollah's renewed fourth-generation war efforts - what it sowed with its debasement of Palestinians.

The absence of a level playing field is glaring. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) may kidnap a doctor and his brother - two civilians - from their home in Gaza. But Leviathan runs amok when Hezbollah captures soldiers (according to Israel that's "illegitimate and illegal"). Meanwhile, Israel's Defense Ministry places "the head of the snake" in Damascus, even while the IDF uses the same questionable methods - toward civilians.

The taboo - never questioned by the bulk of Western mainstream media - runs that Israel is allowed to kill innocent civilians without expecting any retaliation. The Lebanese French-language daily L'Orient-Le Jour summed it up: the "international community" supports Lebanon without condemning Israel, which is reducing a sovereign country to rubble.

Our way or the (bombed) highway
Israel's logic is unilateral. It has blamed the Lebanese government as a whole. Hezbollah has only a small role in the Lebanese government; it is actually in the opposition. Power in Beirut is in the hands of US and Sunni Arab allies. The Hariri clan, mired in dodgy deals, remains extremely powerful. Fouad Siniora, a banker, the new Lebanese prime minister - and a strong critic of Syria - defines Hezbollah as a "legitimate resistance" group. As such, it should not be disarmed.

Thus Israel's real objective must be to provoke civil war in Lebanon - just as it did everything to provoke civil war in Palestine. The strategy is always the same. Israel wants Fatah to crush Hamas in Palestine, and now it wants the government in Beirut to crush Hezbollah. Or else ...

It was Hezbollah's hardcore warriors - trained by Syria and Iran - who ultimately expelled Israel from Lebanon in 2000. It's difficult for Westerners - or non-Arab Asians - to understand how powerfully symbolic this is in the Arab world: it means that Hezbollah was the only Arab military force ever to defeat Israel. Not surprisingly, even Lebanese Sunnis approve what Hezbollah is doing - they interpret it as solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinian struggle (as Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, made it all too clear).

Moreover, Israel's Leviathan-run-amok response has only served to rally Sunnis behind a "Lebanon under siege" banner.

The relationship between Iran and Hezbollah is not unlike Moscow's with assorted communist parties during the Cold War. There are no directives issued from Tehran - as Washington neo-cons see it. Hamas may be Sunni and Hezbollah may be Shi'ite, but both parties - supported by Syria and Iran - converge as resistance movements based on a platform of national struggle against foreign (Israeli) occupation.

There's nothing sectarian about it. On the contrary, Hezbollah shows total solidarity with Hamas. And way beyond Israel identified as the common enemy, both Hamas and Hezbollah clearly identify the not-so-invisible big enemy behind, the US, for which Israel is a kind of "militarized offshoot", in the words of Noam Chomsky. Virtually every Lebanese knows that the missiles currently exterminating their compatriots were made in Miami, Duluth and Seattle.

Whatever the outcome, blowback will be inevitable. Osama bin Laden, in one of his videos, told the world how he burned with anger when he saw the Israeli bombing of the "towers" of Lebanon during the 1982 invasion. The new Osamas in the making may be Sunni or Shi'ite, it doesn't matter: what matters is what they identify as the American/Israeli license to kill (mostly poor, defenseless) Arabs.

Iran for its part may have been a full Hezbollah supporter, but now it's as much a staunch supporter of Hamas. As Nasrallah has emphasized on many occasions, Hezbollah as a resistance movement is not engaged only in the liberation of the Sheba Farms, still occupied by Israel; Hezbollah sees itself as a powerful actor positioned right at the center of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As Lebanese-born Gilbert Achcar, a political-science professor at the University of Paris-VIII, puts it, "The main source of destabilization in the region is this violent and arrogant behavior of Israel that is in full harmony with the equally arrogant and violent behavior the United States displayed in Iraq." No change is in sight, not when Bush's "Greater Middle East" has revealed itself for what it is - a fallacy.

When in doubt, invade
The Israeli public relations machine - in English, thus widely monopolizing the airwaves, unlike Hezbollah, which expresses itself in Arabic - brags that now it's time to finish off Hezbollah. That makes no sense - because Hezbollah is a mass movement with roughly 1.5 million adherents. To finish off Hezbollah means in practice to finish off all poor Lebanese Shi'ites.

Iran and Iraq would never let it go unpunished. Israel also conveniently forgets that Hezbollah itself should not even exist - after all, it was founded to fight the Israeli invasion (in 1982) and occupation (until 2000) of southern Lebanon.

Israel's three basic demands, passed to Beirut by Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, are the return of two captured Israeli soldiers now under Hezbollah; a Hezbollah withdrawal to the Litani River, which is roughly 45 kilometers north of the current Lebanese-Israeli border; and no more rocket attacks against Israel.

Most of this could have happened before Israel illegally - international law is clear about it - started bombing a sovereign country. They could have traded prisoners. And there would be no Hezbollah rocket attacks because there would have been no Israeli indiscriminate bombings. One thing is certain: there is absolutely no chance the Lebanese will accept retreating to the Litani River. That would mean the establishment of a new Israeli de facto border. The only way Israel can annex these waters is by invading southern Lebanon - again.

That's what the Stratfor Intelligence Report said would happen. "The Israeli Defense Forces is preparing for a major, sustained assault into southern Lebanon to eliminate the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah," said the report. "The assault will extend at least to the Litani River - the first natural barrier, roughly 20 miles into Lebanon - and possibly all the way to areas south of Beirut ... Israel stands on the verge of attempting to completely annihilate Hezbollah in southern Lebanon."

Sounds like wishful thinking. And Hezbollah will do anything to prevent it from happening any time in the future. The key question remains. The Lebanese government knows that if it accedes to Israel's demands, there will be another civil war in the country. At least for the moment, Lebanon seems to be hanging on, engaged in passive resistance against collective punishment.

As Israel wages war on the Palestinian people and now the Lebanese people, Hezbollah may be betting that Lebanon as whole will be able to absorb the extreme limits of collective punishment - and in the end the resistance movement will still come out alive. Now that would be a lesson for the ages.

Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd.

Hezbollah rockets have hit Haifa repeatedly since July 12, when its militants in southern Lebanon crossed the border, capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight others. Israel responded by sending warplanes, tanks, gunboats and ground troops into southern Lebanon. Hezbollah in turn has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel.

Now Berg and other people living in northern communities live with the constant wail of sirens warning of attacks, while spending much more time in safe rooms with no windows and no outside walls.

"We have always felt that we were safe because we thought we were far enough away, but the rules have changed. This is the first time that we have been vulnerable from attacks from the other side of the border," Berg told CBC Newsworld in an interview on Tuesday.

"It's astonishing. I never thought they could do this. This is the new reality."

Heard blasts after daughter left on playdate

Berg said air raid sirens have been going off daily in Haifa - including on Tuesday, when the city went on high alert.

"We have no idea how long this is going to go on. It's very tense, difficult. We are living close to our homes, we can't go to work, we can't go out shopping, we are awakened in the middle of the night by sirens. It's frightening. It's unfamiliar," Berg said.

She said earlier in the day, a siren went off but no explosion followed, so she let her daughter be picked up to go on a playdate. Then the sirens wailed again, followed by a couple of large blasts that seemed close to her home.

"I have no idea what happened. My daughter is out on the streets. That is not recommended," Berg said.

Canadians scramble to leave Lebanon

Meanwhile, on the other side of the border in Lebanon, Canadians are scrambling to get out of the country as soon as possible as the Israeli military continues to pound the country.

The outbreak of intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has left at least 230 people dead in Lebanon and 24 in Israel as of Tuesday.

The victims in Lebanon included a family of six who were vacationing from Montreal. They were killed on Sunday by an Israeli air strike on the village of Aitaroun.

Canada has arranged for six ships to arrive in Lebanon on Wednesday to pick up stranded Canadians and take them to Cyprus and Turkey, from where they will be flown home.

The evacuation is expected to unfold gradually, with hundreds of people to be transported at one time.

Canadian Arab Federation slams evacuation plans

For relatives of Canadians in Lebanon, however, the evacuation is not happening fast enough. Families back home told CBC News that they are frustrated, angry and anxious.

An emergency meeting was held in Toronto on Tuesday night to discuss the situation.

Ali Mallah, of the Canadian Arab Federation, said the Canadian embassy had not worked out how it will transport Canadians in the south of Lebanon to Beirut, since major roads have been bombed repeatedly. Hundreds of Canadians had been visiting relatives in the south when the fighting broke out.

"I don't think they have thought enough about this plan," Mallah said.

But Alan Baker, Israel's ambassador to Canada, said the logistics were being worked out between Canadian diplomats at the embassy in Beirut and the Israeli army to ensure safe passage of Canadians.