Lebanon Breakthrough Is Elusive

In the battle zone of southern Lebanon, incoming shells explode with dulling regularity, the drone of Israeli aircraft crisscrossing the sky never seems to stop and the distinctive whoosh of an outgoing Katyusha rocket can be heard once or twice an hour.

As the conflict in southern Lebanon entered its third week Thursday, and U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher pressed ahead with cease-fire talks in Damascus and Jerusalem without any apparent breakthrough, combatants on both sides had settled into their tasks with a workmanlike tenacity.

Christopher met with both Syrian President Hafez Assad and Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Thursday and planned to hold at least one more meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres early today. “As it stands now, differences remain, and substantial differences,” State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.

U.S. officials said it appeared likely that Christopher will either obtain a cease-fire today or break off the talks and go home.

In New York, the U.N. General Assembly voted Thursday to condemn Israel’s bombardment of civilians in Lebanon, but the Arab-backed resolution failed to gather the strong support its sponsors sought. The vote was 64 in favor, two against and 65 abstentions. The United States and Israel were the only nations opposing the non-binding resolution.

Meanwhile, the rhythms of this confrontation have become routine.

Guerrillas of the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah aim toward northern Israel and shoot their World War II-era rockets--more suited to spreading terror than to striking any specific location.

Israel’s radar-directed artillery answer within minutes, while Israeli jet fighters and reconnaissance planes fly unchallenged overhead, picking off targets with impressive precision.

Casualties mount, and the civilians stubbornly hanging on in the area struggle to survive. According to U.N. military observers, in the two weeks since the launch of “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” Israel has carried out 523 air attacks and fired more than 23,000 artillery rounds into Lebanon. Hezbollah, meanwhile, has shot 1,100 Katyusha rockets and mortars at Israel.

More than 150 people have been killed, the vast majority of them Lebanese civilians. Nearly 100 of the fatalities were from one incident, the April 18 shelling of a U.N. compound at Qana that was sheltering civilians. Hundreds of people have been injured on both sides of the border, and 500,000 Lebanese have been uprooted, as have thousands of Israelis.

Thursday’s casualties included eight Lebanese civilians wounded by Israeli bombardments and three Israeli soldiers and a civilian injured by Katyusha rockets.

In recent days, the Israeli bombers have focused increasingly on the infrastructure of southern Lebanon: roads, bridges, electrical plants, reservoirs and even, on Thursday, a sewage system.

The strategy puts pressure on the remaining civilians to leave, U.N. spokesman Mikael Lindvall said. “Those who are left are having a much harder time to survive.”

For these people, getting food and water has become a daily challenge. Lindvall complained Thursday that U.N. peacekeeping troops are also being hampered by the shelling and destruction of the roadways, which make delivery of humanitarian supplies almost impossible.

When a house in the village of Yater was hit in an Israeli raid Thursday, injuring seven people, three seriously, U.N. peacekeepers could not evacuate the wounded to the large hospital in nearby Tyre because of a huge crater--40 feet across and 30 feet deep--newly left in the roadway by a precision bomb. The wounded had to be taken to a small field hospital with no surgeon in the town of Tibnin.

Attempts were made to locate a helicopter that could carry a Red Cross surgeon to the wounded. But instead of waiting, a U.N. official said, relatives drove the injured up to the crater in private cars, carried them around the hole on their backs, and loaded them into cars on the far side for the ride to the port city of Tyre.

Ein Baal, a village of 200 families, is typical of the fighting zone. It looked all but deserted Thursday.

Electricity and running water have been cut off, the few remaining residents said, and they must walk or drive three miles into Tyre to find food and bottled water.

The aura of fear extends to travelers making their way to and from the embattled south. Near the coast city of Sidon, an Israeli gunboat has stood sentinel a few miles offshore for the past six days, intermittently shelling the coastal highway and occasionally hitting a car.

With most people unwilling to risk this mile-long gantlet, traffic between the north and south had evaporated to a trickle until Wednesday, when the Lebanese army opened an alternate route about a mile inland and down a steep valley. On Thursday, about 100 cars were backed up waiting to cross a bridge through the valley. Because of the detour, a 50-mile trip between Beirut and Tyre took three hours.

Times staff writer Jim Mann in Damascus contributed to this report.