Israel Pounds Lebanon After Hezbollah Attack

Launching an offensive “by air, land and sea,” Israel sent warplanes pounding Islamic guerrilla targets inside Lebanon on Sunday in furious retaliation for an ambush that killed a brigadier general and three other Israelis.

The general--the most senior Israeli army officer killed in Lebanon since Israel invaded in 1982--died earlier Sunday along with two soldiers and a journalist when Hezbollah militia detonated two roadside bombs in southern Lebanon. That ambush was the second such deadly attack on Israeli forces in less than a week.

Bracing for new Hezbollah rocket assaults, Israel ordered residents throughout its northern tier bordering Lebanon to evacuate the area or take refuge in bomb shelters until further notice. Two Katyusha rockets hit an Israeli village in the western Galilee on Sunday before the Israeli assault began, army spokesmen said.

“We will continue to attack, and the force we are showing is a sign of our readiness to continue to strike,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a news conference called hastily Sunday night to announce the military actions.

The escalation came as Israel is slugging its way through a bitter political campaign, with elections for prime minister scheduled in 11 weeks. And it immediately plunged Israel and the region into an unpredictable and volatile period. Hezbollah is backed by both Syria and Iran, two of Israel’s worst enemies in the Middle East.

“We have no desire to escalate in Lebanon,” Netanyahu said, “but we cannot sit aside and watch these criminal attacks against our people.”

Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, who joined Netanyahu at the news conference broadcast live on national television, added: “We will continue by air, land and sea, for as long as is required.”

There were no immediate reports of further casualties, nor was there any evidence that the offensive went beyond the airstrikes. Still, the action appeared to represent the sharpest escalation of the conflict in Lebanon since April 1996, when 16 days of fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas left 150 people dead, most of them Lebanese civilians.

The Lebanon entanglement, often regarded as Israel’s Vietnam, has long been a conundrum that no Israeli government has known how to resolve. There is a growing consensus within Israel that it should quit its occupation of southern Lebanon, but there is little agreement on how to withdraw without jeopardizing the safety of northern Israel.

Dozens of activists protesting the Israeli presence in Lebanon and demanding unconditional withdrawal rallied Sunday in Tel Aviv and blocked streets until they were dispersed by police. A small but growing group, they plan more demonstrations today.

In Washington, the Clinton administration deplored Sunday’s violence and urged that both sides exercise “maximum restraint.”

In raids that were continuing late Sunday, Israeli fighter jets reportedly bombarded Hezbollah positions in eastern and southern Lebanon and south of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Targets included what Israeli officials described as a principal Hezbollah command-and-control headquarters in the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon. Lebanese reports claimed that Israeli shells had landed near a government hospital in a Baalbek residential neighborhood.

Israel said it also bombed a Hezbollah training camp and an arms depot.

The ambush that prompted the airstrikes struck an Israeli army convoy in the Israeli-controlled “security zone” in southern Lebanon. Brig. Gen. Erez Gerstein, 38, and Voice of Israel radio reporter Ilon Roeh, 32, were traveling in an armored Mercedes-Benz that was blown up when Hezbollah guerrillas set off a bomb alongside the road.

Hezbollah’s armed wing said it detonated a second bomb about 20 minutes later when Israeli reinforcements arrived. Also killed were Gerstein’s driver, a 10-year veteran of the brigade stationed in southern Lebanon, and a 22-year-old soldier.

Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, in a statement issued in Beirut, said the bombing “will undoubtedly be the start of a great turning point in the operations of the resistance and the hopes of the people.”

Gerstein was the Israeli army’s liaison officer with Israel’s proxy South Lebanon Army, and as such was Israel’s highest-ranking officer permanently based in Lebanon.

He had earlier survived several close calls, including at least one attack that appeared to target him specifically. But Sunday’s explosion seemed more likely part of a pattern in which Hezbollah is increasingly able to penetrate Israeli-occupied areas and plant land mines or ambush patrols.

The Israelis too have become more aggressive in recent months. But the rugged, tree-covered terrain has made it difficult for Israeli forces to use their superior technology to rout the guerrillas once and for all.

Israel, pursuing Palestinian guerrillas, began occupying parts of Lebanon in 1978 and then, in 1985, established a 9-mile-deep buffer zone along Lebanon’s southern frontier. Israel said the zone was necessary to prevent cross-border terrorist attacks against Israelis, and Hezbollah, “the party of God,” has been fighting to eject Israel ever since.

On Tuesday, the commander of Israel’s elite paratroop commando unit was slain with two of his lieutenants in a Hezbollah ambush. With Sunday’s incident, the number of Israelis killed in Lebanon in a week was seven, compared with 24 for all of last year.

Until last year, Israel had ignored United Nations demands for a pullout. But Netanyahu now says he is willing to withdraw if he can be assured that Lebanon will prevent its territory from being used as a staging ground for anti-Israeli terrorism. Syria, the real power behind Lebanon, has refused to let Beirut negotiate with Israel until Israel returns the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.

There is considerable debate within the Israeli government about how to extract Israel from Lebanon. Some advocate a tricky strategy of bombing Beirut and cutting off water and electricity to force an end to Lebanese tolerance of Hezbollah.

The offensive launched Sunday does not go that far, but it is nevertheless a big political risk for Netanyahu. He made the decision in consultation with the two most dedicated hawks in his Cabinet, Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon and Defense Minister Moshe Arens.

“Our policy cannot be determined by a combination of accident and tragedy,” said one senior Israeli official, voicing the frustration felt by many in the government. “The only alternative we have is what we are doing; anything else would be worse. All we can do is try to minimize the damage by Hezbollah. A unilateral retreat would only endanger the security of the Galilee.”

The 1996 assault in Lebanon, called “Operation Grapes of Wrath,” was launched by then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who was also facing elections at the time. It ended in tragedy when two Israeli artillery shells slammed into a U.N. base in Qana, Lebanon, where hundreds of civilians had taken refuge. About 100 were killed and dozens more wounded, including four U.N. peacekeepers.

Neither that offensive nor the 1993 “Operation Accountability,” which left about 130 people, mostly civilians, dead, succeeded in crushing Hezbollah.

After the 1996 debacle, the United States on April 26 of that year brokered a cease-fire and obtained agreement from Israel and Hezbollah on ground rules governing how they could fight each other. Attacks on civilians were prohibited, but the right to “self-defense” was allowed. Both Israel and the Hezbollah guerrillas have frequently invoked that right in retaliatory raids on each other.

After Sunday’s assault, however, it is unclear whether any semblance of the understandings remains intact.

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Times staff writer Rebecca Trounson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.