Israel, Hezbollah Hold Fire, but More Clashes Expected

Lebanese-based Hezbollah guerrillas fired salvos of rockets into northern Israel for a second day Friday, but a dangerous escalation of violence apparently was halted when both sides later said they were suspending retaliatory attacks--for now.

The flare-up, which left dozens injured and at least three dead on both sides of the tense border, underscored the volatility of the region as Israel prepares to withdraw troops that have occupied southern Lebanon for more than two decades.

Hezbollah has been fighting for years to oust Israel from Lebanon. But now that Israel has said it will leave by early July, both sides seem to be keen to stake out their endgame positions.

In their heaviest attacks in nearly a year, Hezbollah Shiite militants launched a barrage of Katyusha rockets into Israel’s northern Galilee region Thursday afternoon and again Friday morning, in what they said was retaliation for Israeli fire.

In shellshocked northern towns such as Kiryat Shemona, families emerged bleary-eyed from a night in bomb shelters only to be sent running for cover by renewed rocket fire. Friday’s attacks came at midmorning as residents hurried about their shopping for the Jewish Sabbath. By Friday night, however, the army announced that it was safe for residents to abandon the cramped, dingy shelters.

Israel retaliated for Thursday’s attacks with overnight air raids that hit two Lebanese power stations and a guerrilla arms depot. On Friday afternoon, after an emergency Cabinet meeting and amid international calls for restraint, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said it would not further escalate the spiral of violence threatening to engulf the region.

“We should not react in a moment of anger, because we do not want an escalation during the final stages of our cutting ourselves off from the Lebanese tragedy,” Barak said Friday night in an interview with Israeli television. At the same time, he stressed, “I don’t advise anyone . . . including the Syrians, to try Israel’s patience or ability by attacking our civilians after we are back inside Israel’s borders.”

Hezbollah claimed “victory” and gloated that it had forced Israel to back down because of the “high price” in casualties that the Jewish state would have to pay.

Hezbollah maintained that its Thursday onslaught came in response to an Israeli shelling of a Lebanese village, which Israel said was accidental, and the killing of two Lebanese women by the pro-Israel South Lebanon Army. The Hezbollah rocket strikes Thursday killed an Israeli soldier and injured 26 civilians.

An escalation of the conflict now, and in the weeks leading up to Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, was to be expected, analysts in Israel said. Hezbollah militants want to be seen as the force that chased Israel out of Lebanon. Every attack they launch strengthens their political and moral position in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, where they hope to gain legislative power, and in the nine-mile-deep zone along the border that Israel is about to evacuate.

Barak and Israel want to counter the image that they are being chased out of Lebanon while also showing that they will exact an ever-higher price if their people are attacked.

“Our [intention] is to pull out of Lebanon by July from a position of power, with the rules of the game being determined by us, and not by Hezbollah,” Israeli army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz said.

Syria, the main power broker in Lebanon and a patron of Hezbollah, has warned Israel that it should withdraw only as part of a broader peace deal that includes returning the Golan Heights to the Syrians. This has been seen in some quarters as a threat of cross-border attacks. Peace talks between Israel and Syria broke down earlier this year.

The clashes hinted at a grim picture of what the aftermath of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon could look like. If anything, though, the violence may only steel Israeli resolve to get out.

Residents of Kiryat Shemona--many of whom demanded that greater punishment be dealt their attackers but also have grown accustomed to nights in bomb shelters--said Hezbollah would no longer have a pretext for launching cross-border salvos once Israeli troops leave Lebanon.

That was the opinion held by Yaniv Messika, voiced as he surveyed the damage to his parents’ home. A Katyusha slammed into the backyard Thursday as his mother sat watching her favorite soap opera. The force of the blast sent a window crashing around her, but her injuries were slight.

“Fighting is only leading to more chaos,” said Messika, 30. “I know it sounds corny, but we have to give peace a chance. It’s the only way.”

Messika, who was wounded 14 years ago by a Hezbollah rocket that hit his high school, was trying to persuade his parents to leave Kiryat Shemona for a safer city to the south. But he knew they wouldn’t budge.

“This is a beautiful place here, and you can’t just give up,” he said.

Two doors away, on the pleasant residential street lined with pine trees, rosebushes and honeysuckle, a Katyusha plowed into the stucco home of a 67-year-old widow Friday morning. No one was inside at the time, but the woman, who came to Israel in 1946 as a Holocaust survivor, returned later to inspect what was left of her residence.

“I came from that [world] war, straight into this war, and ever since we’ve been living through wars,” said the woman, who asked that only her first name, Shulamit, be used. She waded through shards of glass and pieces of red tile that covered the floors. Furniture, clothes and knickknacks were scattered helter-skelter. Doors were wrenched from their frames.

“This makes me very, very sad,” she said. “If my husband were alive, this would have killed him again.”

And just a few blocks from Shulamit and the Messikas, Zehava Zarad stood in her kitchen Friday morning, cooking fish for her family’s Sabbath meals, when another missile fell into the woods across the street. Plumes of gray smoke billowed from amid the trees.

“I am not a hero, but I will stay,” said Zarad, 36, with two children and a third on the way. “This is my town, my home, my family, my friends.”

In Lebanon, Israel’s early Friday air raids shook people out of bed and knocked out electrical power in parts of the country. Firefighters were extinguishing blazes, and electricity was rationed in some areas. Other Israeli ordnance dug a crater in the main Beirut-Damascus highway, severing a central thoroughfare. Furious Lebanese officials estimated damage at more than $50 million.

“We strongly condemn these barbarous raids by Israel,” Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss said, adding that the reprisals were proof that Israel was not really interested in pulling out of Lebanon. “This demonstrates to the whole world Israel’s duplicity and its lack of serious intention to respect international resolutions and humanitarian principles.”

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Staff writer Rebecca Trounson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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Kiryat Shemona

Town comes under Hezbollah rocket fire for a second day