The price of food, medical supplies and gasoline rose by as much as 500 percent in parts of Lebanon on Thursday as Israel's relentless bombardment destroyed roads, bridges and other supply routes. The World Food Program said estimates of basic food supplies ranged from one to three months.

On a day that saw U.S. Marines return to Lebanon for the first time in 22 years, the war looked ready to expand dramatically. Neither side showed any sign of backing down. Hezbollah refused to release its two Israeli soldiers without a prisoner exchange, Israel was aiming to create a new buffer zone in a region that saw 18 years of Israeli presence ending in 2000.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah shrugged off concerns of a stepped-up Israeli onslaught, vowing never to release two Israeli soldiers captured by his guerrillas even "if the whole universe comes (against us)." He said they would be freed only as part of a prisoner exchange brokered through indirect negotiations.

He spoke in an interview with the Al-Jazeera news network taped Thursday to show he had survived a heavy airstrike in south Beirut that Israel said targeted a Hezbollah underground leadership bunker. The guerrillas said the strike only hit a mosque under construction and no one was hurt.

The United States - which has resisted calls to press its ally Israel to halt the fighting - was sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region, arriving in Israel on Tuesday or Wednesday after stopping over in Arab nations, Israeli officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the schedule was not yet confirmed.

The mission would be the first U.S. diplomatic effort on the ground since the Israeli onslaught against Lebanon began nine days ago.

Israel has decided air power alone will not be enough to drive Hezbollah back from the Israeli-Lebanon border and that a ground force will be needed to establish a zone that is at least 20 miles deep, senior military officials said Thursday. That would force Hezbollah behind the Litani River.

Israel wants to send a strong message to all its enemies, especially Iran, that the consequences of attacking the Jewish state will be unbearable.

But mounting civilian casualties and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese could limit the amount of time Israel has to achieve its goals, as international tolerance for the bloodshed and destruction runs out.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora put the death toll at more than 330 - at least 11 of them killed Thursday - with 1,100 wounded. At least 31 Israelis have been killed, including 16 soldiers - two of them killed in Thursday's fighting.

The U.N. estimated that about a half-million people have been displaced in Lebanon, with 130,000 fleeing to Syria and about 45,000 believed to be in need of assistance.

More than 600 relatives of U.N. peacekeepers and other foreigners were evacuated by ship from the southern port city of Tyre, a region south of the Litani that has seen a ferocious pounding by Israeli warplanes and gunboats for days. Many of the women and children had spent the night on the beach waiting for the ship that arrived Thursday morning and took them to Cyprus.

The exodus of Americans and other foreign nationals stepped up dramatically, with ships lining up off Beirut to take thousands of families waiting at the port out of the war zone.

A group of around 40 U.S. Marines hit the ground in Beirut, helping in the evacuation of hundreds of Americans to a Navy transport vessel, the USS Nashville, offshore - the first U.S. military deployment in Lebanon in 22 years. More than 2,200 Americans were pulled out Thursday, twice the number a day before.

Two large explosions shook south Beirut late Thursday in new Israeli strikes on the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah's stronghold. During the day, Israeli strikes pounded villages and towns in the Shiite heartland of the south and the eastern Bekaa Valley.

Hezbollah, in turn, fired more than 40 rockets into northern Israel.

The clashes about a mile inside the Lebanese side of the border Thursday evening came when an Israeli patrol sweeping for Hezbollah bunkers was ambushed by guerillas, taking casualties. The fight rapidly expanded, with Israeli helicopters firing missiles at targets on the ground and rescue force storming in.

The Israeli military said two Israeli soldiers died in the fighting and several guerrillas were killed. Hezbollah's Al-Manar television said three Israeli soldiers were killed but did not mention guerrilla casualties.

Two Apache attack helicopters crashed in northern Israel near the Lebanon border early Friday, injuring four soldiers, the Israeli military said. Al-Jazeera reported that four soldiers were killed in the crash, but did not give a source.

Israel has stepped up its small-scale forays over the border in recent days, seeking Hezbollah positions, rocket stores and bunkers. Each time it has faced tough resistance from the guerrillas.

In preparation for a more powerful punch deeper into Lebanon, an Israeli military radio station that broadcasts into the south issued what it called "a strict warning" that Israeli forces would "act immediately" to halt Hezbollah rocket fire.

"It will act in word and deed inside the villages of the south against these aggressive terrorist acts. Therefore all residents of south Lebanon south of the Litani must leave their areas immediately for their own safety," the message in Arabic on the Al-Mashriq station said.

More than 300,000 people are believed to live south of the Litani - which twice has been the border line for Israeli buffer zones. In 1978, Israel invaded up to the Litani to drive back Palestinian guerrillas, withdrawing from most of the south months later.

Israel invaded Lebanon again in a much bigger operation in June 1982 when its forces seized parts of Beirut. It eventually carved out a buffer zone that stopped at the Litani. That zone was reduced gradually but the Israeli presence lasted for 18 years until 2000, when it withdrew its troops completely from the country.

Hezbollah militants fired at least 11 rockets at Israel's port city of Haifa, wounding three people. Israeli warplanes pounded Lebanon's main road link to Syria, collapsing part of Lebanon's longest bridge. A U.N.-run observation post near the border was hit, but no one was hurt.

Ships lined up at Beirut's port as a massive evacuation effort to pull out Americans and other foreigners picked up speed. U.S. officials said more than 8,000 of the roughly 25,000 Americans who live or work in Lebanon will be evacuated by the weekend.

After 10 days of the heaviest bombardment of Lebanon in 24 years, Israel appears to have decided that a large-scale incursion across the border is the only way to push Hezbollah back. But mounting civilian casualties and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese could limit the time Israel has to achieve its goals, as international tolerance for the bloodshed and destruction runs out.

An Israeli military radio station warned residents of 12 border villages in southern Lebanon to leave before 2 p.m. Friday. It was the latest in a series of recent warnings from the Al-Mashriq station, which has said Israeli forces would "act immediately" to halt Hezbollah rocket fire.

At least 335 people have been killed in Lebanon in the Israeli campaign, according to Lebanese security officials. Thirty-four Israelis also have been killed, including 19 soldiers.

The United States - which has resisted calls for it to press its ally to halt the fighting - was sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Israel on Tuesday or Wednesday after stopping over in Arab nations, Israeli officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the schedule was not yet confirmed.

"We are all very concerned about the situation in the Middle East, and want to find a way forward that will contribute to a stable and democratic and peaceful Middle East," Rice said Friday as she met a three-member U.N. team.

The mission would be the first U.S. diplomatic effort on the ground since the Israeli onslaught against Lebanon began.

Israeli warplanes also pounded Lebanon's main road link to Syria with missiles. Three buses that had just dropped off passengers in Syria were set afire, but the drivers escaped, police said.

Two Apache attack helicopters collided in northern Israel near the Lebanon border, killing one air force officer and injuring three others, two seriously, Israeli officials said. Israel's air force began an investigation.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, meanwhile, said his country was sending urgent aid to Lebanon by air and sea and he called for safe passage.

His comments came a day after U.N. Secretary-General
Kofi Annan warned of a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon and called for an immediate cease-fire, even as he admitted "serious obstacles" stand in the way of even easing the violence.

"We are setting up a humanitarian air and sea port," Douste-Blazy said in Beirut. "At the same time, we demand the establishment of humanitarian corridors."

Top Israeli officials met Thursday night to decide how big a force to send in, according to senior military officials. They said Israel won't stop its offensive until Hezbollah is forced behind the Litani River, 20 miles north of the border - creating a new buffer zone in a region that saw 18 years of Israeli presence since 1982.

Israel has stepped up its small forays over the border in recent days, seeking Hezbollah positions, rocket stores and bunkers. Each time it has faced tough resistance.

Israeli warplanes also fired four missiles that partially collapsed a 1.6-mile suspension bridge linking two steep mountain peaks, part of the Beirut-Damascus highway in central Lebanon. The bridge has been hit several times since the fighting began.

Renewed attacks struck the ancient city of Baalbek, a major Hezbollah stronghold, and security officials said two people were killed and 19 wounded. They also attacked Hezbollah strongholds in south Beirut and elsewhere overnight.

Al-Jazeera reported one person had been killed in south Beirut and another wounded; the report could not immediately be confirmed.

Air raid sirens wailed in Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, and at least 11 rockets struck in two barrages. Three people were wounded, with 16 suffering from shock.

More rockets were fired elsewhere into northern Israel, the army said, with strikes reported in Rosh Pina, Safed and in several communities near the Sea of Galilee.

Hezbollah has fired hundreds of rockets from the Lebanese border since fighting began, forcing hundreds of thousands of Israelis to take cover in underground shelters. Eight people in Haifa were killed July 16.

A U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said an artillery shell fired by the Israeli military made "a direct hit on the U.N. position overlooking Zarit."

An Israeli military spokesman said the position was hit by rockets fired by Hezbollah guerrillas at northern Israel. The differing accounts could not immediately be reconciled.

During an Israeli offensive against Lebanon in 1996, artillery blasted a U.N. base at Qana in southern Lebanon, killing more than 100 civilians who had taken refuge with the peacekeepers.

The U.N. mission, which has nearly 2,000 military personnel and more than 300 civilians, is to patrol the border line, known as the Blue Line, drawn by the U.N. after Israel withdrew troops from south Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.

Hezbollah said three of its fighters had been killed in the latest fighting with Israeli troops, bringing to six the number of guerrillas killed since Israel launched the massive military campaign against Lebanon after the militant Shiite Muslim group captured two of its soldiers on July 12.

Annan denounced Israel for "excessive use of force" and Hezbollah for holding "an entire nation hostage" with its rocket attacks and capturing the Israeli soldiers.

Neither side showed any sign of backing down.

The Israeli army issued a call-up of reserves. The exact number of troops was not disclosed, but a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said it would be several thousand.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah shrugged off concerns of a stepped-up Israeli onslaught, saying the captive soldiers held by his guerrillas would be freed only as part of a prisoner exchange brokered through indirect negotiations.

He spoke in an interview taped Thursday with Al-Jazeera to show he had survived an airstrike in south Beirut that Israel said targeted a Hezbollah leadership bunker. The guerrillas said the strike only hit a mosque under construction and no one was hurt.

Lebanese, meanwhile, streamed north into Beirut and other regions, crowding into schools, relatives' homes or hotels. Taxi drivers in the south were charging up to $400 per person for rides to Beirut - more than 40 times the usual price. In remote villages of the south, cut off by strikes, residents made their way out over the mountains by foot.

The price of food, medical supplies and gasoline rose as much as 500 percent in parts of Lebanon as the bombardment cut supply routes. The World Food Program said estimates of basic food supplies ranged from one to three months.

The U.N. estimated that a half-million people have been displaced, with 130,000 fleeing to Syria and 45,000 believed to be in need of assistance.

More than 400,000 people - perhaps as many as a half-million - are believed to live south of the Litani, according to Timur Goskel, the former top U.N. adviser in the south. The river has twice been the border line for Israeli buffer zones. In 1978, Israel invaded up to the Litani to drive back Palestinian guerrillas, withdrawing from most of the south months later.

Israel invaded Lebanon again in a much bigger operation in 1982 when its forces seized parts of Beirut. It eventually carved out a buffer zone that stopped at the Litani. That zone was reduced gradually but the Israeli presence lasted for 18 years until 2000, when it withdrew its troops completely.

"The first priority today is to ensure that the wounded and sick can be evacuated, that medical teams obtain access to the victims and can work safely," said Pierre Krähenbühl, the agency's director of operations.

The government was opening schools to house those fleeing the attacks in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley and other Hezbollah strongholds. Fatfat said 86,000 refugees were living in schools.

Ghassan Sweidan, a 40-year-old businessman in the northern city of Tripoli, said he was offering an apartment, free of charge, to a family of seven "for humanitarian reasons."

Some, like, the al-Jammal family, fled their village of Insariyyeh on foot because they had no car.

Relatives took turns pushing 40-year-old Sikna al-Jammal in a wheelchair over shards of glass and rubble in the sweltering heat. About three miles from their village, the al-Jammals, waving a white blanket to signal they were civilians to Israeli warplanes overhead, still had not found someone to give them a lift to Sidon, five miles away.

U.N. organizations expressed concern about Lebanese trapped in villages that have been cut off because of Israel's destruction of roads and bridges and are trying to rush supplies to them.

"The developing scenario is one of a country divided into small, isolated compartments, with populations in the south unable to access vital humanitarian assistance," UNICEF said.

By Thursday the price of vegetables, fruit, dairy products, gasoline and other essentials had risen by as much as 500 percent.

Two pounds of lemons, which cost 50 cents before the offensive, were selling for $3.30. The price of green beans tripled from about 25 cents a pound to 75 cents. And the price of gasoline rose from $2.60 a gallon to $3.79 a gallon.

Fatfat said there was enough fuel and flour for a few weeks.

"But we need mattresses and blankets for the refugees. There will soon be food and drug shortages," he said. "We need urgent assistance."

Trucks are targets

Only a handful of takeout restaurants were open in Beirut, and their fare was limited.

"There are no buns, cheddar cheese, nachos, turkey, ham, avocado, chicken strips, chocolate pancakes," said an operator at an American-style fast food outlet.

ATM machines stopped giving dollars and banks set a withdrawal limit of $1,000 a day.

Gyms that remained open scaled back on lighting and air conditioning to save fuel. At one health club, use of the pool was banned for fear the glass skylight would break from the impact of shelling.

Trucks have become a target of Israeli shelling, because Israel fears Hezbollah is using the vehicles to transport missiles.

Sahfiq al-Qassis, head of the union of truck owners, said he has asked drivers to keep their vehicles away from residential neighborhoods, according to Al-Balad newspaper. But he said if Lebanon's 16,500 trucks remain paralyzed, this will affect supplies.

In the mountain resort of Bhamdoun, Mayor Osta Abu Rjeily was making sure the thousands who fled to his town get water, soap and shampoo.

"We insist that parents wash their children every day to prevent the outbreak of disease," he said.

He has also instructed boutique owners in the town, a favorite haunt of rich Kuwaiti tourists, to replace the chic, designer outfits in their stores with cheaper clothes to cater to the newcomers.

"We're dealing with two faces of this tragedy," he said. "The sad situation of the refugees and the fleeing tourists."

The post is part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

But an IDF spokesman said the position, located just inside Israel, was hit by rockets fired by Hezbollah that fell short of their targets in northern Israel.

The UN official said the facility was severely damaged, but none of the Ghanaian troops inside the bomb shelters inside were injured.

In 1996, during an Israeli air and artillery offensive against Lebanon, artillery blasted a UN base at Qana in southern Lebanon, killing more than 100 Lebanese civilians who had taken refuge with the peacekeepers.

The mission of UNIFIL, which has nearly 2,000 military personnel and more than 300 civilians, is to patrol the border line, known as the Blue Line, drawn by the United Nations after Israel withdrew its troops from south Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.

Since its deployment in 1978 after an Israeli invasion, Palestinian guerrillas and later Lebanon's Hezbollah have ignored it. Israel invaded southern Lebanon and swept through to Beirut to occupy it, slicing unhindered through the peacekeepers' lines.

The force is made up of more than 1,990 troops from China, France, Ghana, Ireland, India, Italy, Poland and Ukraine.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was meeting Thursday night with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who earlier in the day denounced both Israel and Hezbollah and called for both sides to stop fighting immediately.

"He was talking about a cessation of violence in the context of a lasting, durable solution, which is exactly what we have been talking about," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

The Bush administration is playing down expectations for Rice's upcoming trip to the Mideast, saying she will not shuttle among capitals to broker a deal.

"You're not going to see a return to the kind of diplomacy, I think, that we've seen before where you try to negotiate an end to the violence that leaves the parties in place and where you have status quo ante," McCormack said.

Administration officials also questioned whether a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah is even feasible.

"We'd love to have a cease-fire," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. "But Hezbollah has to be part of it. And at this point, there's no indication that Hezbollah intends to lay down arms."



John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said it was time for the Security Council to start considering a response, but he, too, ruled out a cease-fire.

"I think it's a very fundamental question how a terrorist group agrees to a cease-fire," Bolton said. "How do you hold a terrorist group accountable? Who runs the terrorist group? Who makes the commitments that the terrorist group will abide by a cease-fire? What does a terrorist group think a cease-fire is?"



Hezbollah is an Islamic militant group that does not recognize Israel as a state. It holds effective military and political control over southern Lebanon, and is the most potent political force on Lebanon's fractured political landscape.

The Bush administration has repeatedly said that a temporary or quickly negotiated cease-fire would leave Hezbollah able to regroup and rearm after more than a week of Israeli missile attacks.

Israel, and Washington as its closest ally, insist that any settlement must deal with the underlying threat posed to Israel by Hezbollah's control of southern Lebanon. The Bush administration is trying to hold off international pressure for as long as possible, while also asking Israel to consider the consequences of its actions for civilians.

More than 300 people have died in Lebanon, most of them civilians, since Israel began retaliatory rocket attacks after Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers last week.

The House voted 410-8 on Thursday to support Israel in its confrontation with Hezbollah guerrillas. The resolution also condemns enemies of the Jewish state.

House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, cited Israel's "unique relationship" with the United States as a reason for his colleagues to go on record swiftly supporting Israel in the latest flare-up of violence in the Mideast.

Little of the political divisiveness in Congress on other national security issues was evident as lawmakers embraced the Bush administration's position.

So strong was the momentum for the resolution that it was steamrolling efforts by a small group of House members who argued that Congress's pro-Israel stance goes too far.

The nonbinding resolution is similar to one the Senate passed Tuesday. It harshly condemns Israel's enemies and says Syria and Iran should be held accountable for providing Hezbollah with money and missile technology used to attack Israel.

"During the night the Israeli air and naval forces also targeted another prevalently Christian area, the southern suburb of Hadeth. The junction that takes to the closed Semaan tunnel was struck and a fire broke out in a shrine with a votive cross on top. The areas of Shweifat and Choueifat were targeted in the south-eastern suburbs," adds Spero News.

"Lebanese believe that not a single inch of their country is beyond the whir of Israeli warplanes, the hiss of a falling bomb or the devastating explosion when one hits," explains the Mercury News.

Meanwhile, the Brits are taking issue with the Israelis, not for bombing Lebanon per se but rather because "right-wing Israelis" are celebrating killing British.

"The rightwingers, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister, are commemorating the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of British rule, that killed 92 people and helped to drive the British from Palestine," reports the Times Online. "They have erected a plaque [in tribute to the terrorist group Irgun] outside the restored building, and are holding a two-day seminar with speeches and a tour of the hotel by one of the Jewish resistance fighters involved in the attack.... The controversy over the plaque and the two-day celebration of the bombing, sponsored by Irgun veterans and the right-wing Menachem Begin Heritage Centre, goes to the heart of the debate over the use of political violence in the Middle East. Yesterday Mr. Netanyahu argued in a speech celebrating the attack that the Irgun were governed by morals, unlike fighters from groups such as Hamas."

In other words, terrorism is moral when it is unleashed by Zionists. Likewise, we are told ad nauseam by the pro-Israel corporate media, Israel's mass murder campaign in Lebanon is moral because it is "self defense," never mind that the babies and grandmothers slaughtered never lifted a hand against Israel. Obviously, it is a punishable offense to be born Arab. The fact one is a Christian does not serve as a hall pass.

While the Brits whine about "right-wing" (in a word, fascist) Israelis killing their colonial officers and celebrating it, few talk about the crimes perpetuated against the Lebanese.

In 1982, during "Operation Peace for Galilee" (as in the tombstone epitaph, rest in peace), Lebanon was not only a killing ground, it was also systematically looted. "Twenty thousand Palestinians and Lebanese died, 25,000 were wounded and 400,000 were made homeless during the first months of the 1982 Israeli invasion. The tonnages dropped on Beirut alone surpassed those of the atomic bomb which devastated Hiroshima. Schools and hospitals were particularly targeted," writes Ralph Schoenman (The Hidden History of Zionism).

Virtually all rolling stock and heavy equipment from Lebanese factories were looted and taken to Israel. Even the lathes and smaller machine tools from the U.N.R.W.A. vocational training centers were pillaged.

The citrus and olive production of Lebanon south of Beirut was destroyed. The Lebanese economy, whose exports had competed with Israel's, became moribund. The south of Lebanon became an Israeli market even as the headwaters of the Litani River, like the Jordan River before it, were diverted by the Israelis.

The author of this book experienced the bombing and siege of West Beirut in 1982, lived with Palestinians in the ruins of Ain El Helweh during Israeli occupation and witnessed the devastation in the Palestinian camps of Rashidya, El Bas, Burj al lamali, Mieh Mieh, Burj al Burajneh, Sabra and Shatila, as well as the destruction of the Lebanese towns and villages throughout the south.

The accounts of Israeli enactment of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila have been substantiated by this author, who was present in the camps on the final day of slaughter. He and Mya Shone photographed Israeli tanks and soldiers in Sabra and Shatila and spoke to the survivors over a period of four days.

Israel is currently revisiting these horrors on Lebanon as I write. Lebanon, an example of a modern and multi-ethnic Arab society that works, must be destroyed, as the Arabs, according to the vile ideology of "right-wing" Israelis such as Binyamin Netanyahu, must never be allowed to prosper.

Moreover, Lebanon serves as the template for the larger Zionist plan to balkanize the neighborhood. "Lebanon was the model, prepared for its role by the Israelis for thirty years, as the Sharett diaries revealed. It is the expansionist compulsion set forth by Herzl and Ben Gurion even as it is the logical extension of the Sharett diaries. The dissolution of Lebanon was proposed in 1919, planned in 1936, launched in 1954 and realized in 1982," Schoenman continues, and then quotes the late Israel Shahak:

Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The subsequent dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas, as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run. The dissolution of the military power of these states serves as the primary short-term target.

"Each Arab state is examined with a view to assessing how it may be disassembled. Wherever minority religious groupings are present in the army, [Oded Yinon] sees opportunity," Schoenman explains.

Yinon's plan for Arab and Muslim balkanization, drafted at the precise time Israel was bombarding Lebanon in 1982, was "shared by many people in power" in Israel, according to its author.

"But the article clearly doesn't represent any official Israeli view. Instead, it's an example of the contentious internal debate about Israeli policy that goes on daily in the Hebrew press. Moreover, the Arab reaction to the article may indicate more about Arab fears than the article itself does about Israeli intentions," opined a dismissive Wall Street Journal on December 8, 1982. "Still, given the current fragile situation in the Middle East, in which some Lebanese leaders are accusing Israel of encouraging religious strife between Lebanon's Christian and Druse Moslem sects, Mr. Yinon's article makes interesting reading."

"Every Arab state ... especially those with cohesive and clear nationalist directions, is a real target sooner or later," writes Khalil Nakhleh in the publisher's note of Israel Shahak's translation of Yinon's A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties. "This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme," as revealed by Livia Rokach.

In her book, Israel's Sacred Terrorism, Rokach argues that the "inter-Lebanese conflict," invented by Ben Gurion "from scratch," was "attributed, shamelessly, to Israeli security needs," a cynical effort to exploit "terror and aggression to provoke or create the appearance of an Arab threat to Israel's existence" in order to force the "partition and subordination of that country to Israel." According to Rokach, "a detailed blueprint... was elaborated by Israel more than fifteen years before the Palestinian presence became a political factor in Lebanon," that is well before Israel used Palestinian "terrorism" (resistance to occupation and brutality) as an excuse to decimate its neighbor in 1982.

Now the excuse is Hezbollah. Lebanese PM "Siniora told Milan-based newspaper Corriere della Sera that the Shi'ite militia has been doing the bidding of Syria and Iran, and that it can only be disarmed with the help of the international community and once a cease-fire has been achieved in the current Middle East fighting," reports Haaretz. "It's not a mystery that Hezbollah answers to the political agendas of Tehran and Damascus," Siniora was quoted as saying by Corriere. "The entire world must help us disarm Hezbollah. But first we need to reach a cease-fire."

Of course, attempting to disarm Hezbollah-that is to say set the resistance organization up to be slaughtered by Israel-will result in yet another Lebanese civil war, as Shi'ites will once again turn against Christians, with international "peacekeepers" caught in the middle, and this will further reduce the country, as long planned.

Finally, the corporate media, working feverishly to blame Hezbollah for Israel's provocations, admits Hezbollah is a military force to be reckoned with.

"Hezbollah's ability to use relatively advanced weapons in the last week of fighting against Israel, as well as the variety of its armaments, has surprised U.S. military experts, current and former officials involved in Middle East policy said," writes the Los Angeles Times, making sure to blame the next target on the neocon hit list. "The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because intelligence matters are involved, said Hezbollah fighters, once viewed as a ragtag group of guerrillas, appear to have received training by Iran in sophisticated missile technologies. Some of the training may have taken place in Iran, they said.... Israeli intelligence officials said assistance, including basic weapons and supplies, continues to flow from Iran. One Israeli intelligence official said there was new evidence that Iran had stepped up arms shipments through Camp Zabadani, a longtime base that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard maintains in Syria, near the Lebanese border."

In other words, in order to take out Hezbollah, according to these Israeli "analysts," Syria and Iran must be attacked. Of course, even if Israel or the United States attack Syria and Iran, this will not end the resistance in Lebanon.

"The Israelis believe they have had some effect, but Hezbollah remains in this fight," Jon B. Alterman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a Bush neocon, told the LA Times. "They can sustain this for quite some time," thus providing the criminal and genocidal state of Israel all the reason more to attack the innocent and defenseless, including their erstwhile "friends," the Maronite Christians of Lebanon.

Dr. Mohammad Farran, an heart specialist, said they had sent letters to the United Nations and the European Union drawing their attention to the use of chemical weapons by Israel in Lebanon.

Michel Aoun, former Lebanese prime minister and current head of the 'Free Patriotic Movement' also spoke directly from Lebanon by mobile phone.

He said 650 people have been killed till now and over 1,000 injured by the Zionist aggression in Lebanon.

Aoun, a Christian Maronite, said a church was also attacked and damaged by Israel.

He said the crisis will not be resolved even if Hizbollah released the two Zionist soldiers and called for a comprehensive settlement of the Middle East problem.

Professor Rudolf Al Kareh of the Belgo-Lebanese society urged the international community to put pressure on Israel for an immediate ceasefire.

He showed a picture displaying Israeli children writing 'gift from Israel' on artillery shells which were fired on Lebanon.

"This is their gift to our children," said al-Kareh.

Jean Abboud, a senior priest representing Tripoli and North Lebanon, said he was ready to go to Israel to mediate a ceasefire and exchange of prisoners between Hizbollah and the Zionist state, but he added that the time was not ripe as yet.

Meanwhile, for the fourth consecutive day Thursday, Arab, Lebanese and Belgian peace activists held a gathering in front of the EU headquarters in Brussels to against the Israeli aggression in Lebanon.

'Israel today is committing a deliberate crime against Lebanon' and 'Stop Israeli terrorism', read placards carried by the demonstrators.

The woman was fortunate. She made it to the hospital. But out in the hinterlands between the Israeli border and the Litani River, the heart of the war zone where the bombardment is most relentless, witnesses say casualties are dying untreated.

UN armoured convoys cannot retrieve the dead and wounded for fear of being shelled themselves and because the roads are so badly cratered. The dead are being left to rot beneath the rubble of their homes. Nor can the UN force, Unifil, deliver food, water and other basic supplies to either its own observation posts near the border, or to scores of Lebanese villages cut off by the fighting.

Unifil is unable even to retrieve its own casualties. Two civilian staff members, a husband and wife from Nigeria, are thought to have been killed in an Israeli raid on Horsh, just south of Tyre, on Tuesday. A convoy of Chinese engineers was unable to reach the scene that day because of Israeli shelling. Yesterday Unifil could not send out any armoured convoys because of the intensity of the shelling and air raids around Tyre.

Ahmad Mrowe, director of the Jabel Amel hospital, said that one casualty who arrived yesterday had been ferried from the village of Siddiqine by eight cars, each driving from one crater to the next. It took eight hours to cover a distance that usually takes 20 minutes.

In the hospital's intensive care unit lay Alia Alieddine, 30, one of only two casualties to reach the hospital from the village of Srifa, ten miles east of Tyre. Israeli jets flattened four homes there overnight. Villagers recovered ten bodies but another twenty-five are thought to be under the rubble.

Connected to breathing tubes and her head heavily bandaged, Ms Alieddine stared blankly at the ceiling. "She suffered major head wounds. Her arm is broken and she lost a lot of blood," Abdullah Abbas, a doctor, said. "Her chances are not good. It is in God's hands."

With Tyre almost cut off from the north, the hospital is running short of supplies. Dr Mrowe said: "We only have enough food and drinking water to last another five or six days. We will stay anyway. We'll never leave."

The Israeli military has broadcast warnings before its raids and hundreds of villagers fled before the shells and missiles struck. The Israelis are also hitting targets that they believe have links to Hezbollah.

But among the refugees in the Rest House hotel in Tyre, few blamed Hezbollah for their misery. When the TV said that Haifa had been struck again by the group's rockets yesterday, one man said to general assent: "Let them suffer as we are suffering."