A spokesperson for Blair said he would like the resolution to be in place by early next week.

Blair and Bush are expected to talk about what would be needed to bring about a ceasefire. Blair is on record as saying he thinks a ceasefire should be lasting.

The spokesperson for Blair told reporters on his plane as it flew to Washington that Blair is expected to "increase the urgency" of the need to resolve the crisis through a ceasefire and to talk to Bush about the "practical steps" necessary to end the violence, including setting up an international stabilization force in the region.

"We want to accelerate discussions that are going on among the international community, identifying those who would serve in a stabilization force, and increase the tempo of putting that stabilization force together," said the spokesperson, who customarily speaks from a position of anonymity.

Looking for lasting peace

Blair has said the violence is a crisis but certain conditions are needed to make a lasting peace.

"It will not stop on both sides unless there is a plan to make it stop and that's what we are working on urgently," Blair said at a news conference on Monday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Blair and Bush are also expected to talk about Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the fighting in the Darfur region in Sudan, although fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is likely to dominate discussion.

In other developments Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she will fly back to Israel to discuss the crisis with the Israeli government, but she did not say when. Rice was in Malaysia attending a conference on Asian issues.

"I do think it is important that groundwork be laid so I can make the most of whatever time I can spend there," Rice told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.

Israeli media reported Friday that Rice will return to Israel on Saturday night and plans to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday, but the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv and Israel's foreign ministry declined to confirm the reports.

Battling for control of border towns

The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah has left at least 438 people dead in Lebanon and 52 in Israel. Lebanon's health minister said Thursday he thinks as many as 600 Lebanese civilians have been killed by the violence so far.

Fighting started on July 12, when Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid.

Since then, Israel has launched an offensive against Hezbollah, pounding its positions in Beirut and south Lebanon daily to destroy its infrastructure. Hezbollah has responded with rocket attacks on northern Israel.

Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas have been battling for control of border towns and villages in south Lebanon.

Thousands of civilians, including foreign nationals in Lebanon, have been caught in the crossfire. The UN estimates about 800,000 people have been affected by the conflict.

with files from the Associated Press

Insisting on Israel's right of self-defense, Peretz said that "everything" would be done against those who attacked Israel, adding that Israel would not allow the presence of Hezbollah guerillas in the border area.

He said that Israel would "exert all the power required" in order to defend itself, adding that the recruitment of reserve soldiers was aimed at "preparing for any possible development" in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Halutz announced that the Israeli army had inflicted "enormous" strategic damage to Hezbollah during the 16-day-old onslaught in Lebanon.

Hundreds of Hezbollah fighters have been hit during the Israeli assault, according to Halutz, who also said that Hezbollah's weapons capabilities had also been "damaged significantly."

In addition, the Israeli military chief said that the Israeli army would draft up to three divisions, following the cabinet's approval. Three divisions are made up of between about 18,000 to 30,000 soldiers.

Both Peretz and Halutz said that the Israeli military offensive in Lebanon would "continue as long as it takes", but added that Israel had no intention to "open a front" with Syria, which supports Hezbollah.

The top Israeli military brass' statements came after the Israeli cabinet decided against a massive ground invasion of Lebanon earlier in the day.

But the cabinet agreed to call up more reserve soldiers if need be.

Israel launched a big assault against the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah on July 12 when Hezbollah guerillas kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others during cross-border attacks.

The Israeli army has launched intense airstrikes on targets across Lebanon and small units of ground forces are operating on the Lebanese side of the border to carry out "pinpoint" attacks against Hezbollah strongholds.

But both Dagan and Yadlin agreed during a security cabinet meeting on Thursday that Hezbollah still maintained the ability to command and control and still held long-range missiles, according to the report.

A military source said on Friday that at least 200 Hezbollah operatives had been killed during the over-two-week conflict, said Ha'aretz.

Lebanese security sources said that Israel Air Force (IDF) warplanes renewed attacks on suspected Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon Friday morning, killing at least on person and wounding three others.

Israeli jets attacked targets at Lebanon's southern market town of Nabatiyeh at about 8:30 a.m. (0530 GMT), the sources said, adding that a Jordanian was killed by missile shrapnel and three others were wounded in the strike.

The Israeli massive offensive against Lebanese Hezbollah entered its 17th day Friday, which started on July 12 after two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by the Shiite group Hezbollah in across-border attack.

Gillerman, who spoke at an event hosted by The Israel Project advocacy group and later inside the United Nations, gave a heated defense of Israel's two-week campaign against Hezbollah militants. He said some diplomats from the Middle East had told him that Israel was doing the right thing in going after Hezbollah.

His refusal to conduct a joint investigation will be a slap to UN officials, who have specifically sought to partner with Israel to investigate the bombing.

Colonel Rolf Kullberg told Finnish commercial broadcaster Nelonen that prior to the incident, the peacekeepers had repeatedly asked the Israel Defense Forces not to bomb the post.

Nelonen quoted witnesses as saying that four Israeli warplanes had bombed the post.

The direct hit on the post killed four UN observers, who were from Austria, Canada, China and Finland.

The embarrassing U-turn comes only hours after Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett savaged the U.S. on learning that two A310 cargo planes loaded with GBU28 bombs landed at Prestwick airport in Glasgow last weekend.

But in a humiliating slap-down to the Foreign Secretary, sources said it would be 'safe to assume' that the stop-overs will continue to be allowed.

The U.S. yesterday confirmed it had lodged requests to bring two more planes through the UK carrying bombs and missiles for Israel, which claimed yesterday it had the world's approval to continue its bombardment of Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon as the death toll there passed the 600 mark.

In an extraordinary and controversial outburst, justice minister Haim Ramon declared the decision of the Rome conference of foreign ministers on Wednesday not to call for a ceasefire was in effect the green light to continue the offensive.

Mr Ramon said the Israeli air force must bomb villages before ground forces enter, suggesting that this would help prevent Israeli casualties in the future.

As he spoke, the Israeli cabinet approved the call-up of 30,000 more reserve soldiers. And Al Qaeda intervened in the crisis for the first time, urging Muslims to strike the 'crusaders' backing Israel - a tacit threat to the U.S. and Britain, whose leaders are holding crisis talks in Washington today.

- A top Iranian envoy was in Syria yesterday for talks on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, according to Iranian news reports. They said the meeting was designed to discuss ways to maintain supplies to Hezbollah fighters with 'Iranian arms flowing through Syrian territories'.

But diplomatic sources in Washington suggest the US and Israel believe serious damage has been inflicted on Hizbullah, so the White House is ready to back a ceasefire resolution at the UN next week. Today Mr Bush and Mr Blair will discuss a version of the resolution that has been circulating in Washington and London.

The draft peace deal involves two phases. In the first, Israel and Lebanon would agree a ceasefire and a small multinational force would be deployed on the border, allowing Israeli troops to withdraw. Then a much larger force of between 10,000 and 20,000 troops would be assigned to implement UN security council resolution 1559, agreed two years ago, under which militias such as Hizbullah would be disarmed and the authority of the Lebanese government forces extended to the country's southern border.

European officials are sceptical about disarming Hizbullah. But they believe that, if other countries in the region can be persuaded to contribute to the buffer force, it would give them a vested interest in addressing Hizbullah's threat to Israel.

A British official said the two-phase idea was raised by Britain at Wednesday's international conference in Rome and "the US are almost certainly going to push something through next week".

France, which holds the presidency of the security council, has drafted its own resolution which it wants to push to a vote early next week. The French plan calls for an "immediate halt to the violence", "a handover of prisoners to a third party enjoying the trust of the two belligerents", UN shuttle diplomacy in pursuit of a "general settlement framework", and the deployment of an international force in support of the Lebanese army. Controversially, it says a buffer zone should straddle the Israel-Lebanon border.

It is unclear whether Mr Blair will urge Mr Bush to do something the administration has decided to do anyway. The prime minister is intent on demonstrating that he has influence in the White House and Britain has its own policy. Polls this week showed public disquiet over his closeness to Mr Bush and the failure to act more decisively to end the bloodshed.

The US and Britain have stood against most of the rest of the world in refusing to call for an immediate ceasefire. Mr Blair has not changed his position on that, but a Downing Street source said he would urge the US to move faster in backing the resolution. "Collectively we have to step up the urgency of the search for a ceasefire."

With an eye on the Arab world, Mr Blair wants to ensure that Hizbullah and other militant groups such as Hamas do not emerge stronger from the crisis. He will reiterate to Mr Bush that the key to resolving the violence is resolution of the Palestinian issue.

No 10 dismissed the row over US military flights using Prestwick airport, Scotland, to send weapons to Israel without telling Britain as an issue of process, not principle.

Israel has long taken the view that it is justified in inflicting collective punishment because the Palestinian population is collectively responsible for any acts committed within its midst. Politicians frequently speak of the "heavy price" that must be paid for attacks on Israeli citizens or the army.

There is considerable historical precedent for such conduct. Reliance on collective responsibility was hitherto viewed as a lawful means of deterring the commission of hostile acts by a population in occupied territory. During the United States-Mexico War of 1847-48, US General Winfield Scott ordered that if individuals responsible for attacks on troops and army property were not handed over by the Mexican authorities then "the punishment shall fall upon entire cities, towns, or neighborhoods". The tactic of punishing on the basis of a notion of collective responsibility was also a common feature in colonial era conflicts - in the Boer War the British would respond to hostility by imposing fines, burning farms and destroying private property. The Black and Tans relied on similar means in pre-independence Ireland, as exemplified by notorious incidents such as 'The Sack of Balbriggan'.

It was during the Second World War, however, that this concept of collective responsibility was relied on in the bloodiest of ways. The treatment of the Russian population by the Nazis, for example, was described as a "punitive expedition in continuous operation", in which widespread collective penalties were inflicted in the form of mass executions and extensive destruction of property. On the Allied side, Winston Churchill proposed in the aftermath of several massacres in Czechoslovakia that three German villages should be razed for every one which had been destroyed by German troops. In the aftermath of the war several Nazi war criminals were convicted of the crime of collective punishment by Allied military tribunals.

Universal repugnance to the conduct of the Second World War led to the adoption in 1949 of the Geneva Conventions, marking a turning point in the way in which States would conduct themselves during warfare. More States have signed up to these important treaties than the United Nations Charter, demonstrating a universal commitment to be bound by the rules of international humanitarian law. The Fourth Geneva Convention protects civilians in occupied territories and states clearly that "[n]o protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited." While reliance on collective responsibility was not relegated to the past - Saddam Hussein is currently being tried for the murder of 143 people in Dujail as a collective punishment for an attack on his life there in 1982 - the unlawful character of such conduct is now established beyond doubt and can no longer be justified on the basis of some perceived deterrent effect.

Despite being a signatory to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, Israel has frequently resorted to collective punishment since the beginning of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. It has illegally demolished thousands of houses in response to hostile acts committed by one or more of the inhabitants. The Supreme Court has regularly upheld the lawfulness of this practice, regardless of the clear conflict with the rules of international law, and Justice Ben-Dror once commented that an individual who engages in terrorism "should know that his criminal acts will not only hurt him but also are apt to cause great suffering to his family". Although the practice of house demolition was temporarily suspended in 2004, the Israeli army has indicated a willingness to resurrect the practice if circumstances require it.

The imposition of collective punishment is a war crime under customary international law. Numerous individuals being tried before the Special Court of Sierra Leone have been charged with just such a crime. But in the most comprehensive codification of international crimes, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, collective punishment does not feature among the dozens of listed war crimes over which the Court has jurisdiction. Although Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute, its representatives did attend the 1998 diplomatic conference which led to the adoption of the instrument. It was at their behest that the war crime of collective punishment was excluded from the Court's jurisdiction.

The Israeli armed forces' actions in Gaza continue its long-standing tradition of taking harsh collective punitive measures against the Palestinian population. History has shown that such repressive measures rarely achieve their stated objectives. Rather than deter hostile conduct, such actions have tended to antagonize and embitter the local population, and provoke even further violent acts of resistance. In the context of this particular conflict, and especially in light of the political compromise that had been achieved between Hamas and Fatah days before the commencement of the Gaza offensive, it seems that a revival of hostilities may very well have been what the Israeli authorities had intended when they allowed the armed forces to take such extreme and disproportionate measures.