The king appealed to the world to stop Israeli attacks on Lebanon, and also pledged to donate over $1.5 billion to the country, according to the statement by the royal court.

The king has assigned $500 million for the reconstruction of Lebanon, and $1 billion to be deposited in Lebanon's central bank to support the economy.

He said that the Saudi government had been trying to bring a halt to the violence since it began on July 12.

"It must be said that patience can't last forever, and if the brutal Israeli military continues to kill and destroy, no one can foresee what may happen."

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait have rebuked Hezbollah for the fighting in Lebanon and the Saudis have described the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers as an "uncalculated adventure".

Abdullah's statement comes a day before the kingdom takes part in an international conference on the crisis in Rome.

Abdul-Illah al-Khatib, the Jordanian foreign minister has said that Arab delegates will push for an immediate ceasefire and the Lebanese government's assertion of its authority over southern Lebanon.

"Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan fear the momentum behind Iran's regional ambitions, which largely explains their surprisingly public criticism of Hezbollah, and by implication Iran," said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, referring to how the three nations sided with their former arch-enemy Israel in its attacks against Lebanon.

"The anti-Israel declamations of Iranian President Ahmedinejad and Iran's continued support of actors that refuse to recognise Israel's existence has paradoxically elevated Iran's standing in the Arab street and alarmed Sunni Arab rulers who have either recognised Israel or moved toward it," Perkovich added.

Long-time rulers in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have all met their toughest internal opposition from Islamist political groups, like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Islamic Action Front in Jordan.

Some of these groups have even taken up arms against the ruling regimes, as is the case with al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia and al-Jihad in Egypt. The regimes, with U.S. backing, have been fighting these movements for years and are concerned that such groups could draw inspiration if Hezbollah comes out stronger from its current confrontation with Israel.

"Hezbollah is also an Islamist movement with ties to similar organisations in other Arab countries. Both the Egyptian and Jordanian governments have grown fearful of the rise of Islamist movements after the Muslim Brotherhood's electoral gains in Egypt and Hamas' election victory in Palestine," said Amr Hamzawy of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"Their strategic interest in containing Hezbollah, and for that matter Hamas, feeds on the ongoing domestic conflict with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic Action Front, respectively."

Those motives coincide perfectly with Washington's aim, and that of Israel, to disarm Hezbollah and push it north of the Israel-Lebanon border.

This is the mission for the visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Rome on Wednesday, where a core group of international players that includes Arab states will meet to chart the future of the region in the wake of the ongoing Israeli attacks on Lebanon.

Rice's visit has the declared purpose of creating "a new Middle East" where the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah no longer has potency in its confrontations with Israel and where the Arab governments will play a central role.

Analysts here agree that the basic theory that Secretary Rice is taking to the Middle East, where she arrived Sunday, is to get Arab regimes that are hugely unpopular with those they rule to work as guard dogs on the Israeli borders against rocket attacks from deeply rooted organisations like Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Palestinian territories.

Rice's job, says Juan Williams, a senior correspondent with National Public Radio (NPR), "is to get the Arab states to act as a buffer between Hezbollah and the Lebanese government and Israel and the United States".

And the Arab regimes are already on it.

The White House received Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, chief of the Saudi National Security Council, over the weekend, while Egypt's intelligence chief Omar Suliman and Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit had met earlier with Rice and President George W. Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley.

The first target of U.S. instructions to the Arab regime appears to be Syria.

Explaining the U.S. tactics, Paul Gigot, the conservative editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, said: "They're working on Egypt and Saudi Arabia to try to pressure Syria to stop arming Hezbollah... the most important thing is to give Israel the time it needs to really make progress against Hezbollah, and I think that is the opening, and I think they're now taking it."

Washington has ostracised Damascus over the past two years and withdrawn its ambassador, leaving U.S.-backed Arab rulers like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia as the main channel to take the message to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"[The administration] is trying to say to Syria... your interests are better served in the Sunni Arab camp and the camp that's pretty much on our side than with the Iranians," Mara Liasson, the national political correspondent for NPR, told Fox News Sunday.

"I do know that the United States is clearly looking to Syria, not Iran, as the target of diplomacy here. Syria is the weaker power, and while they don't provide the hundreds of millions of dollars a year that Iran does to support Hezbollah, they are the conduit for all the weapons that come from Iran into Lebanon and to Hezbollah," she said.

The second step prescribed for the Arab regimes is to give both political and military backing for the secularist anti-Syrian and anti-Hezbollah government of Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora.

Joshua Bolten, White House chief of staff, said on Sunday that Rice's mission to the region is to "empower the Lebanese government" and to rally the Lebanon Core Group, which includes the Washington-backed Arab trio Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in helping the Lebanese government "control its own territory" and stand between Israel and Hezbollah.

The plan is to create an international force that may include Arab elements to help the Lebanese government and its feeble army replace Hezbollah as guards for Israel's northern borders.

"I think the strategy for the U.S. is to try to put together, with our allies, Arab and around the world, an international force that would go into southern Lebanon, as Israeli combat operations cease, accompany the Lebanese army into the south and provide, finally, a strong buffer," said David Ignatius, a columnist with the Washington Post.

"That's a very, very difficult proposition. But that's what we're trying to do."

"In the name of the government, we condemn the American positions ... giving the green light to the occupation to continue its aggressions," Haniya told the Hamas-led cabinet, according to an official statement released to journalists.

"We ask the American administration to stop its blind support for the occupation ... and not allow the continued killing of children, women and old people by American weapons on Palestinian and Lebanese lands.

"It seems that from the American point of view, the new Middle East starts by destroying Lebanon, by killing the maximum number of our Palestinian people and by bringing down the resistance," he said.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier in Jerusalem that it was "time for a new Middle East" as she began talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on the Lebanon conflict, before meeting Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank.

Israel has killed more than 380 people, mostly civilians, in Lebanon in its two-week-old offensive that it said was to destroy Hezbollah, recover two soldiers captured by the Shiite movement, and halt rocket attacks on northern Israel.

Meanwhile, 42 people have been killed in Israel in the past two weeks by Hezbollah rockets fired across the border.

Haniya slammed what he called a "dangerous escalation in Israeli aggression", with F-16 warplanes targeting homes while people were inside.

"This is a very dangerous escalation and we call on the American administration to stop this dangerous escalation against the civilians."

Israel last Thursday warned civilians in Gaza that homes storing weapons were a direct target in its offensive in the Palestinian territory that has killed at least 114 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier this month.

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Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip reported that Israeli tanks stationed on the northern borders of Beit Lahia fired at least two shells at residential towers in Al Nada neighborhood, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

The sources added that several shells hit residential tower number twelve and killed Khitam Al Tayeh, 5; three members of her family were injured in the attack.

Hundreds of families living in Abraj Al Nada (Al Nada residential towers) fled their homes after they were repeatedly targeted by the military shells. Four hundreds families used to live living in Abraj Al Nada; they are currently displaced and searching for a safer area.

Also on Monday, Israeli soldiers fired a shell at a Palestinian family riding a horse-drone cart near the American School, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip; two were killed and at least three others were injured.

Local sources reported that the killed are a child and his grandmother. The two were identified as Nader Al Attar, 12, and Khairiyya Al Attar, 55.

The sources added that several children rode the cart with their grandmother and were heading to their nearby farmland.

Earlier on Monday, three Palestinian were killed and ten others were injured after the army shells an entrance leading to residential tower number 10 in Abraj Al Nada. At least fifteen were injured, three seriously.

Dr. Muawiya Hassanen, head of the Emergency Unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, said that two of the killed residents were identified as Sadeq Abdul-Raouf Nasser, 27, and a nurse identified as Sa'adi Ahmad Na'im, 30.

In a separate incident, Palestinian medical sources in Rafah, in the southern part of the Gaza strip, reported on Monday that one resident died of wounds sustained four months ago after the Israeli army shells Rafah refugee camp.

Israel fired eight missiles into the plant's six transformers on June 28, launching a huge offensive after two Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants and a third snatched in a cross-border raid.

"This plant is more important for hospitals, for sewage, and for water of civilians than for any Hamas man or (Islamic) Jihad man with some kind of a missile on his shoulder who doesn't need electricity, as a mother trying to care for her child."

Today, Israel provides residents of the densely populated Gaza Strip with 57 pct of their power needs, Stuart Shepherd, UN humanitarian affairs officer, said.

People in Gaza are "going through a crisis of very little water, very little electricity" causing "more diarrhoea, more diseases and more suffering," Egeland said.

Some 114 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier have now been killed in Israel's offensive, which the army said is intended to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets into Israel and to recover missing Corporal Gilad Shalit.

"Missiles have to stop and destructive incursions have to stop," Egeland said.

Inspecting the ruined transformers with Egeland, Rafiq Maliha, project manager at the plant, said direct losses amounted to 10 mln usd, rising to more than 15-16 mln usd, taking production losses into account.

On an "optimistic" count, he said it would take eight to 10 months to repair the transformers, but that partial production would be restored within three to four months, although there was "no clear fund" to pay for the work.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has defended the plant attack as part of a strategy aimed at preventing Shalit's captors from smuggling him out of Gaza. newsdesk@afxnews.com afp/nes

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There are piles of rubble leading up to the hole in Hazem Ali's house.

It's a week since Israel came into Beit Hanoun, but the gash in the side of his house is still raw, the soft inside of family life still visible through the lumps of concrete hanging from the wall. A broken bed; a few girders dripping onto it; an elegant wardrobe still standing against the back wall.

It was soon after dawn when the Israeli army bulldozed their way in. Hazem was still sleeping, taking a break from his job as an engineer with the local Palestinian news agency.

'Blindfolded'

It was his mother who met them in the hallway, Israeli soldiers in a Palestinian home. Behind her, Hazem and his two brothers emerged, one by one.

The three brothers were blindfolded, says Hazem, and their hands tied behind their backs. He shows me the wounds on his wrists from the plastic handcuffs - still sore and infected, but beginning to heal over.

He shows me where the soldiers positioned them: outside the entrance to his flat on the third floor, in the stairwell, facing down the steps.

"I think they put us here because they were expecting suiciders to come into the flat because none of the soldiers were on the stairs - they were all inside the flat. They put us here so we'll be shot first."

Inside the flat, the soldiers punched holes in the walls of his living room, and bedroom. Through them, snipers exchanged fire with Palestinian militants. Hazem and his brothers heard it all, but could see nothing.

Hazem says he had little idea at the time exactly how long he was kept there. All he remembers was listening to the heavy gunfire around him, and counting the calls to prayer as they echoed over the area: one at lunchtime, one at tea-time, and one in the evening as the sun set. Twelve hours in all.

He says he expected to die any second. He still can't understand why, as civilians, they couldn't be kept in a room somewhere inside the house, where they would have been safer. But they put us in the middle of the clashes, he says. "There was no need for that."

Court outlawed tactic

Allegations over Israel's use of human shields have surfaced before. The last time they made headlines was during Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank town of Jenin, four years ago.

The army denied its personnel systematically used civilians as human shields during that operation, but it did issue an order outlawing the practice. As did the Israeli High Court.

But Yekhezel Lain, research director with the Israeli human rights group B'tselem says they are worried those guarantees are now being eroded. He says the cases in Beit Hanoun last week are the first of their kind since the High Court decision.

"This was a very blatant violation of the prohibition of the use of human shields," he tells me. "It was just soldiers hiding behind the back of civilians who were held with force in their homes."

B'tselem says it is investigating reports of other, similar incidents in Gaza during the past month. And it is worried that - having withdrawn from Gaza last year - the Israeli army may see the area as distinct from other Palestinian Territories.

The group is concerned about Israel establishing different rules in the case of the Gaza Strip where according to the state, there is no occupation any more - it's only a state of war, or armed conflict. The human rights group does not believe there is a difference when it comes to the protection of civilians.

The IDF told the BBC the claims in Beit Hanoun were being investigated, and that its soldiers were obliged to act in accordance with moral principles and the rules of engagement. Any misconduct, they said, would be looked into.

As he waits for news of his case in Beit Hanoun, Hazem Ali has got the builders in to fill the holes in his flat, re-glaze his windows and repair as much of the damage as he can.

His wife, meanwhile, is preparing for the birth of their first child. She is half Egyptian, and has been asking Hazem to move out of the Gaza Strip for months now. But he refuses to leave. There's no running away from Gaza, he says.

Abu Abed Al Mamlok whose home was bombarded last last night, said, "I was sitting at home in the Ash Shoja'eyeh District when I got a call from a unknown telephone number. When I answered, the caller asked me to leave the house within half an hour because they would be shelling it. I thought for a moment that the caller was playing a joke on me, but I also knew that this kind of call had been received by others, so I rushed to leave the house. It was then completely destroyed."

Hours before Al Mamlok's home was destroyed, Sheikh Mohammed Dib answered the ringing of his home telephone. He heard the cynical tone of the intelligence officer, who said only, "Take your children, women and furniture if you want, we will bombard your house within two hours."

These bombardments did not only affect the homes of Intifada activists but all the homes surrounding the homes earmarked for Israeli bombardment had to be evacuated as well as the Gaza Strip is densely populated and homes are built close to each other. Furthermore Israeli bombardment of homes have repeatedly damaged surrounding property so families neighboring Al Mamlok and Sheikh Mohammed Dib's homes had no choice but to evacuate.

Palestinian sources told Ma'an that at least 5 Palestinian resistance fighters had been informed that the Israeli army intended to destroy their homes. Three homes were destroyed on Monday night, in addition to the damage caused to the An Nahda residential building in the north of the Gaza Strip. The International Committee of the Red Cross refused to accept the role of intermediary between the Israeli army and the Palestinian owners of the houses because they said that this action of the Israeli forces is illegal under international humanitarian law.

Many Palestinians are afraid of this expansion in Israeli policy saying that this shows that the Israeli army is moving to demolish the homes of leaders of resistance movements and activists, and not places which house ammunition stores as they have claimed.

The Israeli army has used F-16 warplanes to bombard several houses in different areas in the Gaza Strip, claiming that they belong to Palestinian activists. These house demolitions came hours after the residents were given a warning from the army to leave, resulting in high numbers of civilian casualties.

The Israeli warplanes bombarded the home of Islamic Jihad activist Salah Ash Sha'er in northern Khan Younis, injuring one Palestinian. They also bombarded the home of Tawfiq Abu Mahsen in the Al Brazil district in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Abu Mahsen is a member of the Izzedine Al Qassam Brigades and the bombardment of his home injured 6 people who had to be taken to the Abu Yousef An Najjar hospital for treatment.

Earlier on Tuesday morning, Israeli warplanes bombed the home of a family in the Ash Shoja'eyeh District in the center of Gaza, moderately injuring four people who were taken to the Ash Shifa'a hospital for treatment.

On Monday afternoon, Israeli forces launched missiles at an empty house in the AZ Zaytoun region in the south of Gaza City, claiming that there were weapons being stored in the house.

Six homes have been bombed and demolished by the Israeli forces over the last few hours.