Word: hizballah
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...Asia and back again, she was on her way to Washington yesterday with not much to show but hope and determination to persuade the U.N. Security Council to approve a U.S.-British resolution laying out a comprehensive political and security plan between Israel and Lebanon, including Lebanon's Hizballah militants. Rice's plans to cement at least informal Israeli and Lebanese commitments to that plan had been sidetracked the day before by the global uproar over an Israeli bombardment that had gone awry, collapsing a residence in the south Lebanon town of Qana, crushing and suffocating 54 people, mostly women...
...Israeli military campaign that Lebanese officials say has so far killed at least 750 people and wounded over 3,000 had already united most Lebanese behind Hizballah, according to polls. And the massacre at Qana may have sealed the bond. "Every house being destroyed is our house, every dead hero is our brother, every kid being killed by an American bomb is our kid," said Dr. Naya Izzaldine, 40, a pathologist from West Beirut and a Sunni Muslim. On Monday, the airwaves are already filled with songs about Qana and someone with access to a huge color printer produced...
...looking increasingly unlikely, however, that the U.S. and Israel will win agreement on the deployment of an international force before Hizballah has agreed to a cease-fire. If the mandate of such a force is to be a counterinsurgency mission on behalf of Israel, there will, quite simply, be no takers. France - currently the most likely candidate to lead such an international force - has made clear it wants an immediate cease-fire endorsed by Hizballah before such a force is deployed. The military confrontation has reached an impasse, say French officials. And that position is likely to be supported...
...Until now, the U.S. has insisted that a cease-fire be called only when Hizballah is ready to surrender its independent armed role, and a mechanism to disarm it is in place. That would involve deploying a robust international force to prevent further Hizballah attacks and possibly taking charge of the process of disarming the movement, eventually paving the way the Lebanese army to take charge of the border...
...Plainly, France's idea of a diplomatic solution includes elements anathema to the Bush Administration. And a cease-fire that is agreed to by Hizballah while it retains its capacity to fight will be counted by the movement as a major victory - it has, after all, defined victory as simply surviving the Israeli onslaught. Israel and the U.S., by contrast, have defined victory as the elimination of Hizballah's capacity to inflict harm, and it will press for a truce that achieves that goal. Still, the limits of what has been achieved on the battlefield may now begin...