Israel, Hezbollah Duel in S. Lebanon : Mideast: Jerusalem politicians spar over best tactics to use against militant group.

On a road outside a South Lebanon village, the Israeli army may have started making good this week on its promise to strike back at Hezbollah, the guerrilla movement formed by Lebanese Shiite Muslims to oust Israel from the south.

Two Hezbollah leaders--Faris Hareb and Abd Majid Marii--were badly injured when a bomb exploded on a road outside the village of Zatour as their car passed by it Wednesday. Hezbollah immediately blamed Israel.

“Israeli commando forces were responsible . . .” Hezbollah said in a statement released to reporters in Beirut.

The army spokesman’s office made no comment on the attack. But Israel has, in the past, acknowledged killing and kidnaping Hezbollah leaders in South Lebanon. Senior army commanders have warned in the past week that the army would soon start taking “directed actions” against Hezbollah--a euphemism commonly applied to hitting at the movement’s leaders.

Rightist politicians in Israel have been urging massive military retaliation for a recent string of deadly Hezbollah attacks on both Israeli soldiers and the South Lebanon Army, which is an Israeli-backed militia.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stirred a storm of controversy earlier in the week when he warned that military retaliation against Hezbollah might lead to a costly counterattack on Israeli civilians or on Jews outside Israel.

In comments to reporters traveling with him to Japan and South Korea, Rabin said that Hezbollah killed Jews in Buenos Aires and London this year in response to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah.

Rabin’s comments were seen as a shift away from the Israeli practice of hitting targets as they become available, regardless of the sort of retaliation an attack might provoke.

Former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon complained that the army has become “a tool in the hands of cynical politicians,” held back from taking the offensive by the government’s desire to make peace with Lebanon and Syria.

Sharon, a leader of the opposition Likud Party, masterminded Israel’s June, 1982, invasion of Lebanon.

“We should shatter the enemy’s equilibrium . . . by keeping them under permanent insecurity and under constant movement,” Sharon told Israel Radio on Thursday.

Wednesday’s attack on the two Hezbollah leaders seemed geared to illustrate that the army has options available to it in its war of attrition with Hezbollah that fall short of all-out invasion.

Reports from Beirut said that Hezbollah leaders had gone into hiding, fearing assassination. Israel reportedly was beefing up its patrols in its self-styled security zone.

About 1,000 Israeli soldiers jointly patrol the security zone with about 3,500 SLA troops. Israel carved out a band of southern Lebanese territory in 1985, when it pulled most of its troops out of Lebanon that had been there since its 1982 invasion. Hundreds of thousands of mostly poor, mostly Shiite Lebanese villagers live inside the zone.

Israeli officials say the zone is needed to protect Israel’s northern towns from rocket attacks and from guerrilla infiltrations. The zone is about 12 miles deep at its widest point and less than two miles deep at is narrowest point.

Lebanon’s government has said it cannot make peace with Israel until the Israelis completely withdraw from South Lebanon.

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The Lebanese government refuses to disarm Hezbollah, arguing that it is a legitimate resistance movement.

Israel’s presence in the zone--its only active front--is costly, both financially and in terms of casualties.

According to army figures, 26 soldiers died in the zone in 1993. An additional 17 have died in the zone so far this year. Most recently, an officer was killed Sunday and seven soldiers were wounded in a Hezbollah ambush.

The SLA also endures a steady stream of casualties. More than 40 SLA soldiers have died in the zone this year.

Hezbollah leaders say their immediate goal is to destroy the SLA as an effective fighting force.

Sunday’s ambush prompted the latest round in what has been a nine-year debate here on what to do about Hezbollah.

Visiting wounded soldiers in an Israeli hospital, Maj. Gen. Amiram Levine, newly appointed head of Israel’s northern command, called for a fresh offensive operation against Hezbollah.

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“In the end we’ll have to defeat them, to take the initiative and attack them,” he said.

Asked by reporters about Levine’s threat, Rabin replied: “Whoever thinks that he has a formula for resolving the problem is mistaken. The problem isn’t Lebanon. Today there is an infrastructure for Islamic terror in the entire world.”

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres seconded Rabin’s reservations about taking the offensive against Hezbollah.

“We have already tried the offensive initiative, and it didn’t solve the problem,” Peres told Israel Radio this week. “Too much blood has been spilled in Lebanon without bringing the results we hoped for.”

Some Israeli analysts argue that Syria is responsible for the upsurge in Hezbollah attacks.

With tens of thousands of troops in eastern Lebanon, Syria remains the chief powerbroker in a nation still struggling to recover from the civil war that erupted in 1975. Syria also is a close ally of Iran, the spiritual fountainhead and chief financier of Hezbollah.

But Moshe Maoz, head of Hebrew University’s Truman Institute for Middle East Studies and an expert on Syria, said that Hezbollah does not need Syrian encouragement to attack Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.

“Hezbollah’s war is a guerrilla war of liberation,” Maoz said. “Even if there was a massive military intervention in Lebanon by Israel, it would not deter Hezbollah. Their aim is to drive Israel from South Lebanon, and to dismantle the South Lebanon Army.”