More Israeli Hits on Lebanon Reported

Israeli warplanes attacked targets in southern Lebanon for the third consecutive day Tuesday, witnesses said.

They said the attacks occurred on the outskirts of two villages in the Iqlim el Toufah ridges overlooking Israel’s occupation zone.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Israel has said it may end its 22-year occupation of the 9-mile-deep zone before its previously announced deadline of July 7.

The guerrilla group Hezbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, is leading a war of attrition to drive out Israel.

Last week, Hezbollah and Israel exchanged the heaviest cross-border fire in almost a year, with the guerrillas launching rockets into Israel and Israeli warplanes striking across Lebanon.

Lebanon and its main power broker, Syria, have said that a pullout without a peace accord would subject Israel to cross-border attacks because it would leave a host of territorial and other issues unresolved.

Meanwhile, the British biographer of Syrian President Hafez Assad said there is no chance of resuming Syrian-Israeli peace talks under the current U.S. administration.

“The Syrian track of the peace process has died, although no one wants to admit it officially. Only a miracle can bring it to life,” said journalist Patrick Seale, who is a longtime Assad confidant.

“International attention has turned to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and to the violent consequences that could follow,” Seale wrote in the London-based pan-Arab daily Al Hayat.

He said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak bears responsibility for the breakdown of the talks because he refused to return the entire Golan Heights, up to the lines held by Syria on June 4, 1967, just before the start of the second Arab-Israeli war.

Seale was more optimistic about the talks before Assad and President Clinton met in March in Geneva. He said Assad had expected Clinton to bring an Israeli commitment to return all of the Golan.