According to sources in Jerusalem, the government was considering requesting US aid - one report estimated a request of $2 billion - to help pay the cost of the war. There was talk in Washington of a large-scale financial package to help rebuild southern Lebanon, and in the process keep the Iranians out of the process. Israel was apparently hoping to fold its aid request into this package.

However, according to the sources, Washington has made it clear to Jerusalem that such aid for Israel is unlikely, even as US President George Bush on Monday announced a $230 million aid package for southern Lebanon.

"Things could change," the source said, "but right now this type of request would be like spitting into the wind."

Suggestions that Israel was going to ask for $2b. come in the wake of reports last summer that Israel was going to ask for a similar amount of aid from the Bush administration to pay some of the cost of disengagement from Gaza and the resettlement of the evacuees. That number was later trimmed down to $1b., and then in July, just before the disengagement began, Finance Minister director-general Yossi Bachar went to Washington and put in a request for $500 million.

Israel, however, shelved the request indefinitely following Hurricane Katrina last August that devastated New Orleans, amid the realization that the disaster caused billions of dollars of damage and that it would not look good at that time for Israel to be asking for hundreds of millions of dollars to help house its displaced population, when the US had its own displaced population to worry about.

In a related development, Globes reported that Washington had extended the US loan guarantees by three years until 2011. Israel has still not yet used $4.6 billion of the $9 billion program, which began in 2003, and - according to the paper - extending the program will make it easier for Israel to raise financing for the war in Lebanon on international markets.

The Israelis justified the raid on the grounds that:

"The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese army were not showing any intention to end the rearmament of Hezbollah, since the former was unwilling to confront the 'terrorist organization.' Thus, Israel had no choice but to act itself to stop the flow of weapons and missiles to the Shiite group, the official added."

This means the Israelis will continue striking at any targets, especially along the border with Syria, that they deem necessary to stop the "rearmament" of Hezbollah. But of course, Hezbollah is already very well armed, as the Israelis discovered to their sorrow and surprise, and their arms are hardly exhausted. This is yet another pretext, just like the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers, for continued aggression against Lebanon - and a means for the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to avoid or at least ameliorate the political consequences of its abortive military campaign. It has more to do with the political situation in Israel than the military situation on the ground in Lebanon. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the real objective of the Israeli raid may not have been interdicting arms at all:

"At least one independent analyst expressed skepticism of Israel's claim that the raid was intended to intercept arms supplies. Arthur Hughes, former director-general of the Egypt-Israel Multinational Force and Observers, said the operation was so risky - both for the Israeli soldiers and the country's international standing - that he found the government's official explanation implausible. 'I would guess there was something of high value they were trying to accomplish,' Hughes said, suggesting that a rescue mission for the captive Israeli soldiers was more likely."

If the two Israeli soldiers could be rescued, then so could Olmert's government - but it is more than just internal Israeli politics that is driving the IDF. As I pointed out last week, we were warned by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who admitted "The war isn't over yet." Indeed, if the Israelis have their way, it has barely begun: they are now shifting their focus to a full-fledged effort to embroil Damascus in the conflict, and I wouldn't rule out air strikes on Syrian territory before all this is over.

Lebanon is just a pawn in the game: Israel's real objective is toppling Bashar al-Assad and militarily confronting the Iranian mullahs - using U.S. troops, of course. The resulting incredibly destructive regional war will see not a few of their old enemies tossed in history's dustbin.

Israel's partisans in the U.S. have, in some instances, been quite open about this objective: Michael Ledeen's infamous taste for "creative destruction" is vivid evidence of the neocons' nihilism. But this is nihilism with a purpose: out of all that death and destruction will come a new world, the vaunted "transformation" of the region that was supposed to lead to democratic societies in nations that had never known any such thing. But, as it turns out, democracy has nothing to do with it: it's all about destabilizing the region to pursue an Israeli agenda. That agenda is the breakup and atomization of the Arab-Muslim world, so that it is little more than a collection of splinters. Lebanon is only the first phase of this campaign, and the Israelis are pushing ahead no matter what Washington thinks.

That is really the big question: is the U.S. going to go along with this crazed Israeli campaign? So far, George W. Bush has gone along for the ride. However, the distance between American and Israeli interests - never as aligned as the two governments averred in public - is fast becoming apparent, and it is only a matter of time before there is a public split.

I would qualify that, however, by adding that the prospects of a coming split are based on the assumption that the White House is putting American interests first, or is even concerned in the least with pursuing them. In the case of this White House, however, that may be assuming far too much.

There is no doubt that the U.S. put pressure on Israel to bring the "incursion" to a swift conclusion, but that wasn't the White House talking. The direction and control of U.S. foreign policy is the object of much internal contention and is shaped by this internecine struggle rather than any central authority.

To be sure, a pro-American faction in U.S. policymaking circles exists but, so far, has been relatively powerless to exert any significant influence: only when U.S. policy seems to go off the rails does it reassert itself. This impulse resulted in the U.S./French effort to engineer a cease-fire, but, as we have seen, the Israelis can violate this and face no immediately discernible consequences.

Condoleezza Rice went to Israel to try to cobble together a cease-fire and was undercut by the IDF's murderous assault on Qana. Condi was reportedly furious, but hers was an impotent rage. The Israelis delight in giving the finger to foreigners who would limit the scope of their actions, and especially, one suspects, to the Americans, whose largess makes the Israeli state possible. Every form of dependency breeds resentment, and in this case it is bound to come to a head in a very public way - given a U.S. commitment to its own interests, that is. But don't expect that from this White House:

"In Washington, the White House declined to criticize the raid, noting that Israel said it had acted in reaction to arms smuggling into Lebanon and that the UN resolution called for the prevention of resupplying Hezbollah with weapons. 'The incident underscores the importance of quickly deploying the enhanced UNIFIL,' a White House spokeswoman, Jeanie Mamo, said, referring to a force of 15,000 UN peacekeeping troops called for by the cease-fire agreement to police the truce."

With 130,000 American troops in the midst of a Shi'ite sea in Iraq, with the entire Arab-Muslim world turning against the U.S. on account of our countenancing the rape of Lebanon, with our supply of vital oil and gas supplies endangered by the outbreak of a regional war and our military at the breaking point - in spite of all this, the president of the United States forges ahead with this mad plan to "transform" the Middle East. It's an outrage, an act of treachery, and, yes, treason on a scale never before seen.

For years, we've been telling our readers that American foreign policy has been hijacked, and here we have the confirmation. The invasion of Iraq, the campaign of threats and provocations directed at Iran, and the destruction of Lebanon have all served the interests of a single country, and that country is not the United States of America. In the most successful covert action in history, Israel's amen corner in the U.S. has essentially seized effective control of the American giant, and is now riding the dumb elephant for all he's worth through the rubble of the Middle East.

The Israeli raid has showed how powerless the UN and the U.S. are against not Hezbollah, but Tel Aviv. As Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, put it to the New York Times:

"We know what they're not going to do, but what will they do. They're not going to disarm Hezbollah. But are they going to stop Israel from re-attacking Hezbollah? If the Israeli government decides there is an imminent threat, and attacks with F-16s, what is the mandate for the UN? What does the UN do?"

There is only one power on earth that can restrain the Israelis, and that is Israel's American sponsors and financiers. But I wouldn't bet the ranch on that happening, as long as George W. Bush - or his Democratic equivalents - reside in the White House. What we have to look forward to, in short, is perpetual war in the Middle East, for as far as the eye can see - unless a miracle occurs and we can reclaim U.S. foreign policy for American interests.

Of those, about 70 joined 300 Jewish student activists in late July in a four-day leadership training seminar that focused on dealing with the aftermath of Israel's war against the Hezbollah terrorist group.

"The face of AIPAC on campus is the face of America," said Jonathan Kessler, AIPAC's leadership development director. "It's also the future of the American pro-Israel movement."

Kessler said AIPAC wants to expand pro-Israel activism to traditionally untapped groups of students, seeking out campuses with small or no Jewish populations.

In January, AIPAC underwrote a mission to Israel to educate 43 non-Jewish students, including the presidents of the National College Democrats and College Republican National Committee.

In interviews, participants in the programs reveal the same anxieties and ambitions their Jewish counterparts face: They want to blunt the effects of media images by providing context. Some hope to book pro-Israel politicians and former Israeli soldiers for campus talks.

"Yes, what people see on television will shape their opinions," said Amanda Wilkerson, a senior political science major at Florida A & M University, a historically black institution. But the conflict violence also "gives us a chance to show that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that is hiding in homes."

Wilkerson said her past AIPAC training -- she was not at the July workshop -- and her on-campus experience was helping her steel for increased anti-Israel activism this year.

"Two years ago, I had people saying it couldn't be done on an historically black campus, that there was no interest in Israel," said Wilkerson, who in the past month has been peppered with dozens of phone calls from students interested in learning more about the Middle East violence. She says she sometimes spends hours
explaining the conflict.

Wilkerson's interest in Israel was piqued when she was assigned the nation for a project in a comparative politics course. She was soon smitten with the Jewish state, and last November, she organized an Israel festival that drew 600 students. Her modus operandi, she says, is connecting her fellow students to Israeli culture.

"We made significant gains over the past year and it's evident on campus," she said. "I am not anticipating that the campus has changed sides, but at the same time I'm prepared to face any challenges that may arise on campus, in Tallahassee and in the world at large. I'm going to stand up and talk."

Jamal Sowell, a black U.S. Marine and graduate student in higher education at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, attended AIPAC's mission to Israel with Wilkerson last year.

He said he is ready to counteract what he expects to be a number of anti-Israel and anti-war forums and protests.

"Pro-Israel activists have to step it up another notch," he said. "You have groups such as Hezbollah that are out to wipe Israel off the map, and they are not going to stop until their agenda is pushed forth. That means that as Americans we cannot sit back and watch; we need to be proactive because what happens over there affects the whole Middle East and our country."

Even students from traditionally Christian schools, where anti-Israel sentiment is comparatively low, are getting ready for a relatively busy season.

"We want to make sure people get the facts," said Brian Colas, a senior at Virginia's Liberty University who interned at AIPAC this summer. "We're going to focus on the nature of Hezbollah to make sure no one is confused that they are a humanitarian organization that was attacked by Israel. If we bring this to the front, right away, I have no doubt that Liberty students will understand and know the nature of this conflict."

Jewish students who have trained with non-Jewish activists at AIPAC events say they marvel at their level of commitment and enthusiasm.

Naomi Berlin, a sophomore at Tufts University in Boston who also interned at AIPAC this summer, said the efforts of her non-Jewish counterparts affirm that what she is doing is right.

"With Jewish students it's something inherent, instilled in us from the beginning," she said. "But for most of them, it's something they've realized on their own. That's why the level of commitment is so impressive.''

"We thought it was just a little ball," said Hassan with a hoarse whisper in the intensive care ward at Tyre's Jabal Amel hospital. In the next bed Sukna, a ventilator cupped to her mouth and a tangle of tubes from her arms, said even less.

Her mother watched anxiously. "The Israelis wanted to defeat Hizbullah," said Najah Saleh, 40. "But what did these children ever do to them?"

Israel may be pulling out of Lebanon but its soldiers leave behind a lethal legacy of this summer's 34-day war. The south is carpeted with unexploded cluster bombs, innocuous looking black canisters, barely larger than a torch battery, which pose a deadly threat to villagers stumbling back to their homes.

Mine-clearing teams scrambling across the region have logged 89 cluster bomb sites so far, and expect to find about 110 more. Meanwhile, casualties are being taken into hospital - four dead and 21 injured so far. Officials fear the toll could eventually stretch into the thousands.

"We already had a major landmine problem from previous Israeli invasions, but this is far worse," said Chris Clark of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Tyre, standing before a map filled with flags indicating bomb sites.

Cluster bombs are permitted under international law, but UN and human rights officials claim Israel violated provisions forbidding their use in urban areas. "We're finding them in orange plantations, on streets, in cars, near hospitals - pretty much everywhere," Mr Clark said.

The bombs are ejected from artillery shells in mid-flight, showering a wide area with explosions that can kill within 10 metres (33ft). But up to a quarter fail to explode, creating minefields that kill civilians once the war is over. A decades-old campaign to ban them has failed.

Israel turned to cluster bombs in the last week of the war, apparently frustrated at the failure of conventional weapons to rout Hizbullah fighters from their foxholes. Mine-clearance teams are finding evidence pointing to their provenance: the US, the world's largest cluster bomb manufacturer, which gave Israel $2.2bn (£1.2bn) in military aid last year.

In Nabatiye, 15 people were injured in just one day along a bomb-strewn road. In Tibnin, 210 bombs were found around the town hospital. "That's about as inappropriate [a use of cluster bombs] as you can get," Mr Clark said.

In Yahmour, a hilly frontline village that has become a complex urban minefield, minesweepers from the UK-based Mine Action Group have cleared the main roads and some house entrances. But danger lurks everywhere. One elderly woman lost her leg in an explosion last Monday as she swept her yard.

Now holes pock the road, yellow tape appears around fields and houses, and residents tip-toe around the "grape bombs". Ilham Tarhini, 45, stood at her front door appealing for help. After returning from refuge in Syria three days ago she found tiny bomblets poking from the soil of her garden of olive trees. From where she was standing she could count eight: "I'm afraid to step into the streets."

But the most volatile payload sat in Jamil Zuhoor's living room. During the war an unexploded rocket packed with bomblets punched through his front wall, skidding to a halt before a chest of drawers. "I can't see us moving back in here for another year at least," he said, shutting the door of his shattered house.

The UN is appealing for money and minesweepers. With such help it hopes the worst-hit areas can be cleared within six months, Mr Clarke said. But until then residents live in fear.

Many share the blame equally between Israel and the US. "It's like we are living in a prison," said Aisa Hussain, 38, a Yahmour resident who has ordered his children to remain inside his house.

Strolling through the village he pointed to yet another tiny black canister perched under a tree. "You see what America is sending us," he said bitterly. "This is their idea of democracy."

Backstory

Cluster bombs were first used by the Germans in the second world war but have become a standard weapon for many countries, including Britain, France and Italy.

The most popular delivery device, the American-made M26 rocket, scatters 644 bomblets over 20,000 square metres. Under test conditions up to 23% of bomblets from the M26 failed to explode on impact. The United States keeps 370,000 such rockets in stock.

The M26 inflicted hundreds of civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003, says Human Rights Watch, over populated areas. The British army used M26s in the 1991 Gulf war

The US halted cluster bomb exports to Israel in 1982 after indiscriminate use against civilians but rescinded the ban in 1988. Belgium is the only country in the world that has banned cluster bombs.

The report reinforces the case for an urgent, comprehensive and independent UN inquiry into grave violations of international humanitarian law committed by both Hizbullah and Israel during their month-long conflict.

"Israel's assertion that the attacks on the infrastructure were lawful is manifestly wrong. Many of the violations identified in our report are war crimes, including indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of power and water plants, as well as the transport infrastructure vital for food and other humanitarian relief, was deliberate and an integral part of a military strategy," said Kate Gilmore, Executive Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International.

The Israeli government has argued that they were targeting Hizbullah positions and support facilities and that other damage done to civilian infrastructure was a result of Hizbullah using the civilian population as a "human shield".

"The pattern, scope and scale of the attacks makes Israel's claim that this was 'collateral damage', simply not credible," said Kate Gilmore, Executive Deputy Secretary General of Amnesty International.

"Civilian victims on both sides of this conflict deserve justice. The serious nature of violations committed makes an investigation into the conduct of both parties urgent. There must be accountability for the perpetrators of war crimes and reparation for the victims."

The report, Deliberate destruction or 'collateral damage'? Israeli attacks against civilian infrastructure, is based on first-hand information gathered by recent Amnesty International research missions to Lebanon and Israel, including interviews with dozens of victims, officials from the UN, Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and Lebanese government, as well as official statements and press reports.

The report includes evidence of the following:

* Massive destruction by Israeli forces of whole civilian neighbourhoods and villages;
* Attacks on bridges in areas of no apparent strategic importance;
* Attacks on water pumping stations, water treatment plants and supermarkets despite the prohibition against targeting objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population;
* Statements by Israeli military officials indicating that the destruction of civilian infrastructure was indeed a goal of Israel's military campaign designed to press the Lebanese government and the civilian population to turn against Hizbullah.


The report exposes a pattern of indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks, which resulted in the displacement of twenty-five percent of the civilian population. This pattern, taken together with official statements, indicates that the attacks on infrastucture were deliberate, and not simply incidental to lawful military objectives.

Amnesty International is calling for a comprehensive, independent and impartial inquiry to be urgently established by the UN into violations of international humanitarian law by both sides in the conflict. It should examine in particular the impact of this conflict on the civilian population, and should be undertaken with a view to holding individuals responsible for crimes under international law and ensuring that full reparation is provided to the victims.

Further information :
Web Feature: Lebanon: Destruction of civilian infrastructure
Image Gallery
Satellite Images
Examples of leaflets dropped by the Israeli Defense Forces
Take Action: Lebanon/Israel conflict: attacks on civilians need immediate investigation

He added that all the progress Lebanon had made toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals had been wiped out and the country now had to start from zero again.

According to the spokesman, the overall economic losses of Lebanon in the past month were in the neighborhood of 15 billion U.S. dollars, at the very least.

He said UNDP had outlined six quick impact projects to address recovery and reconstruction, which the Lebanese government had approved, at an estimated cost of 46.3 million U.S. dollars, and UNDP had already disbursed 3.1 million U.S. dollars of its own funds to jump-start the projects without waiting for donors.

Responding to questions, Fabre said that the situation in Lebanon was very grave, as there had been much destruction.

He added that it was impossible now for Lebanon to repay its debt, which was already very big before last month's conflict.

Kate Gilmore, the Amnesty executive deputy secretary general, said the bombardment of power and water plants and transport links was "deliberate and an integral part of a military strategy".

"Israel's assertion that the attacks on the infrastructure were lawful is manifestly wrong," she said.

"Many of the violations identified in our report are war crimes. The pattern, scope and scale of the attacks makes Israel's claim that this was collateral damage simply not credible."

Amnesty called for an official UN inquiry into human rights violations on both sides of the conflict.

The report's authors described the destruction of up to 90% of some towns and villages in southern Lebanon, releasing aerial photographs that showed Beirut's southern Dahiya district had been transformed from a bustling suburb into a grey wasteland.

"In village after village the pattern was similar - the streets, especially main streets, were scarred with artillery craters along their length," the report said.

"In some cases, cluster bomb impacts were identified. Houses were singled out for precision-guided missile attack and were destroyed, totally or partially, as a result.

"Business premises such as supermarkets or food stores and auto service stations and petrol stations were targeted, often with precision-guided munitions and artillery that started fires and destroyed their contents."

Israel launched more than 7,000 air strikes against Lebanon during the 34-day war, and naval vessels launched 2,500 shells, the report said.

Around one third of the 1,183 people killed in Lebanon were children, while 4,054 people were injured and 970,000 displaced.

Lebanese estimates suggest that 30,000 houses, along with up to 120 bridges, 94 roads, 25 fuel stations and 900 businesses, were destroyed.

Two hospitals were destroyed and three others severely damaged, while 31 "vital points" - such as airports, ports, water and sewage treatment plants, and electrical facilities - were also completely or partially destroyed.

The overall cost of the damage amounted to $3.5bn (£1.8bn), the report said.

Around 4,000 Hizbullah rockets were fired at northern Israel during the conflict, killing around 40 civilians. Up to 300,000 people in northern Israel were driven into bomb shelters by the fighting, and 117 soldiers died.

The Amnesty report said Israeli military policy seemed directed at destroying Lebanese popular support for Hizbullah, a tactic prohibited by the Geneva conventions.

"The widespread destruction ... in addition to several statements by Israeli officials, suggests a policy of punishing both the Lebanese government and the civilian population in an effort to get them to turn against Hizbullah," it said.

Red Cross officials were quoted as saying that people left behind in inaccessible villages in southern Lebanon had been unable to get hold of fresh water.

Refugees from the border village of Rmeish had told Red Cross delegates that locals had had to drinking foul water from an irrigation ditch.

The report's allegation of disproportionate action echoes comments made during the conflict by international observers including French, Russian and EU officials and the UN humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland.

However, the British government has avoided the term, which could be considered an accusation of war crimes, although former the foreign secretary Jack Straw and the Conservative foreign affairs spokesman William Hague both used it.