Rice Returns to a More Promising Scenario

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returned to the Middle East on Saturday expressing optimism about the prospects for ending more than two weeks of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

Rice, who was back in Jerusalem just three days after she left the region, hailed reports from Lebanon that Hezbollah was looking for a deal as “most certainly a positive step.” The militant group’s position is still far from what the Bush administration has sought, however, and Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah was anything but conciliatory Saturday as he issued new threats.

Still, for the first time, Rice said she saw momentum toward a settlement.

“I assume and believe that officials on both sides of the crisis want it to end,” she told reporters aboard her plane as she flew from Malaysia to Jerusalem, where she met Saturday night with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Israeli officials spoke, though in highly circumspect terms, of a potentially shortened timetable for the offensive in Lebanon, which has killed 400 to 600 Lebanese, most of them civilians, in the last 18 days. Nineteen Israeli civilians and 33 soldiers have been killed since the fighting broke out July 12.

Many Israeli military commanders, and some senior aides to Olmert, believe Israel should continue and even intensify its military campaign. But there was growing acknowledgment of strong outside pressure to do otherwise.

On Saturday, clashes in the border zone eased. Israel pulled back its forces from the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, a former Hezbollah stronghold about two miles north of the frontier that was the scene of heavy fighting last week. But movement of Israeli troops and armor could be seen overnight near the Israeli town of Metulla, suggesting another incursion might be imminent from there.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on its website today that in the wake of Rice’s talks with Olmert, “it is assumed at the Defense Ministry that the Israel Defense Forces has seven to 10 days” to continue the offensive.

Heightening tensions, Israel also made its closest strikes yet to the Syrian border. A series of airstrikes late Saturday and early today on the Lebanese side of the frontier forced the closing of the main remaining transit point between Lebanon and Syria.

In a televised speech aired shortly after Rice landed in Jerusalem, Nasrallah threatened to use longer-range missiles to strike at Israel’s densely populated center if the offensive in Lebanon was not stopped. Hezbollah rocket attacks have been confined to a swath extending about 30 miles south of the frontier, but the group claims to have missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv, 75 miles from the border.

Nasrallah dismissed the secretary of State’s visit as a mission for Israel, saying, “Rice is returning to the region to try to impose her conditions on Lebanon again to serve her own Middle East project and Israel’s goals.”

A day before Rice’s return to the region, Hezbollah political leaders in Beirut formally expressed their support for a Lebanese government peace plan. The proposal calls for an immediate cease-fire and a swap of Lebanese and Israeli prisoners. But it does not directly address the issue of disarming the Shiite Muslim group, which the U.S. and Israel consider essential.

There were indications of a new flexibility from the United States and Israel on the mandate of the multinational force that the Bush administration and its allies want in Lebanon. U.S. officials have been arguing for a robust force willing to take on Hezbollah if necessary to end its threat to Israel.

But a U.S. official said the Bush administration had not rejected the idea of a force directed by the United Nations. Such forces generally avoid direct combat roles, and some U.S. officials had opposed that approach for this mission. A 2,000-member U.N. contingent already in southern Lebanon is regarded by many as ineffective.

Israel, too, signaled that it may be willing to accede to the idea of an international force without all the characteristics it had sought. Israeli officials said last week that such a force should be well-armed, unconnected to the United Nations and have a wide-ranging mandate to disarm Hezbollah.

The U.S. official, who declined to be identified as negotiations continued, said, “Our view is that whatever is decided should be guided by [the goal that such a force] should be deployed quickly.” He said the mission of the international force would not be to disarm Hezbollah but to give the Lebanese army, which is less powerful than the militia, “the spine” to do such a job.

Other U.S. and allied officials also have been playing down the proposed force’s potential combat role and emphasizing its planned mission to aid the Lebanese army.

President Bush said Friday that the role would have to be decided by “international consensus.” He said that “the whole purpose of the force is to strengthen the Lebanese government by helping the Lebanese force move into the area.”

This view would bring the United States closer to that of European governments, which have said they would not want to contribute troops to the peacekeeping force if it took on a high-risk combat role. U.S. officials, who have ruled out participation by American troops, have said that they don’t expect the peacekeepers to “shoot their way” into Lebanon.

Rice said reaching a peace deal would require flexibility from both sides.

“I’m now going to go into some, I guess, fairly intense, not easy, give and take,” said Rice, who had a two-hour dinner with Olmert in Jerusalem.

Israeli officials acknowledged that the composition of the force was the key issue at hand.

“The secretary of State is returning here in order to expedite the diplomatic process and in order to see what parameters are available for the international force to work by, and what will be the final general arrangement of this force,” Cabinet Secretary Yisrael Maimon said.

Israeli officials reacted with skepticism Friday to reports of Hezbollah’s endorsement of the Lebanese cease-fire plan. Rice said that she did not know whether to have faith in it. But she said it was an important sign of the strength of the Lebanese government that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was able to win public support from Hezbollah, as well as from the other Shiite party, Amal.

“It shows that the Lebanese government is functioning as a government,” she said. “That in itself is extremely important. That he is able to go back and bring his government together around a way forward is encouraging.”

There were signs that reaching a deal may also require the Israelis to give way on the Shebaa Farms, a small slice of disputed territory at the border of Syria, Lebanon and Israel, U.S. officials said. The Lebanese government claims the territory and probably won’t agree to any deal without gaining at least some ground on the long-standing issue, they said. The U.N. says the territory actually belongs to Syria, but the Damascus government could cede its claim.

Syria reacted coolly Saturday to the proposal to deploy an international force in southern Lebanon, with the official Tishreen newspaper warning that such a contingent would have the mission of “eradicating the Lebanese national resistance.”

“Those who are suggesting spreading an international force on the Lebanese-Syrian borders forget ... that neither the Syrians nor the Lebanese would accept that,” Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal was quoted by the official Syrian Arab News Agency as saying during an interview with the German television network ZDF.

Bilal also said reports that Syria was allowing Iranian weapons to pass to Hezbollah through its borders were baseless. Israel says its has intelligence documenting such transit.

Although Israel pulled back from the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil on Saturday, commanders said their forces would continue to move in and out of the area on “pinpoint” raids. Troops remained in the adjacent village of Maroun el Ras, the military said.

“We will continue to fight in the area of Bint Jbeil,” said Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, the chief of Israel’s northern command. “We hold commanding positions in the areas.”

In a sign that Israel could be laying the groundwork for scaling back its offensive, officials touted what they described as significant achievements in Bint Jbeil, including the destruction of much of a network of tunnels, caves and bunkers.

The Israelis said as many as 80 Hezbollah guerrillas had been killed over the last several days, bringing the total slain to more than 300. Hezbollah has acknowledged the loss of only 31 fighters.

Israeli warplanes hammered targets across Lebanon on Saturday, with the military reporting more than 100 aerial attacks. The army said it was targeting weapons storage and manufacturing facilities, rocket launchers, launching areas and vehicles carrying munitions.

In southern Lebanon, shellshocked civilians described their ordeals in trying to flee the fighting. Israel had ordered residents to leave a string of villages in the south, but civilian vehicles have been struck from the air. Red Cross ambulances were traveling to meet some of those struggling to make their way out on foot.

“I walked barefoot,” said 69-year-old Zeinab Bazzi, who with her 75-year-old husband fled the village of Ainata. She sat in a wheelchair while a physician applied a thick white cream to her blistered feet at a hospital in the southern town of Tibnin.

“The road was hot,” she told him.

Hezbollah guerrillas fired more than 90 rockets at northern Israel, according to army and police tallies. Five people were reported hurt in strikes on the towns of Tiberias, Safat, Nahariya and other communities.

In northern Gaza on Saturday, Israeli army forces launched a “limited incursion” near the Erez border crossing point.

Times staff writers Rone Tempest in Beirut, Kim Murphy in Damascus and Ashraf Khalil in Gaza City contributed to this report. Special correspondent Rania Abouzeid reported from Tibnin, Lebanon.