National Post [Canada]: Shaky UN truce holds as Hezbollah claims victory

Shaky UN truce holds as Hezbollah claims victory

Matthew Fisher, CanWest News Service
Published: Monday, August 14, 2006

SIDON, Lebanon -- The UN-ordered ceasefire in southern Lebanon seemed to be holding Monday as thousands of Lebanese civilians displaced by the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah began to flood back into the battered region.

Although stuck for hours at a time in traffic trying to work its way around bomb craters and wrecked bridges, the mood of the human tide was festive.

Some travelers carried Hezbollah's flags with its assault weapon logo, while others placed photos of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on the windshields of their cars and shouted their love for the cleric to anyone who would listen.

On Monday, Nasrallah appeared on television across the Arab world to boast of a "strategic and historic victory, without exaggeration, for all of Lebanon."

In Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is facing fierce criticisms for his handling of the war effort, appeared before Parliament and vowed his country would continue to hunt down Hezbollah leadership "everywhere and at all times."

Israel launched the war after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12.

A Globes-Smith poll published in Israel on Monday found 58 per cent of those surveyed thought the country had achieved few of its goals in the war and that 52 per cent thought their armed forces had been unsuccessful in Lebanon.

While claiming the conflict had "changed the strategic balance" by eliminating Hezbollah as "a state within a state," Olmert acknowledged "shortcomings" in the way the war had been fought.

"We will review all the battles," he said. "We won't sweep things under the carpet."

The prime minister also warned against "endless internal disputes over the war," but former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the Likud Party and the parliamentary opposition, was having none of it. "We live in a coma and we received a wakeup call," Netanyahu said in his first public critique of the war. "It must be said honestly, there were many failures — failures in identifying the threat, failures in preparing to meet the threat, failures in the management of the war, failures in the management of the home front."

U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking in Washington on Monday, said Hezbollah had "suffered a defeat," because southern Lebanon was now going to be policed by Lebanese troops and a much stronger international force.

Israeli generals on Monday also met with Lebanon’s and UN military commanders to discuss how and when 30,000 Israeli troops would pull out of southern Lebanon.

They are to be replaced by a force of equal size that was to be divided between Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers.

The first of the new UN forces were expected to be deployed beginning early next week.

This time lag, and the fact huge numbers of heavily armed Israeli and Hezbollah belligerants remain almost on top of each other in the hilly south, make obvious the real threat of more bloodshed to come.

The UN ceasefire resolution passed unanimously by the Security Council last Friday gave Israel the right to defend itself.

Hezbollah was required to stop fighting completely and hand its weapons over to Lebanese police and soldiers, but Nasrallah has said that his forces assumed the right to confront any Israelis still remaining on Lebanese territory.

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s tentative count of the dead is 1,109, with 18 people dying in Israeli air strikes in the last hours before the truce took effect.

Two others died Monday when they touched unexploded ordnance.

Israel said it had killed more than 500 Hezbollah fighters and 114 soldiers and 52 civilians had died by the time the guns went silent Monday morning.

Hezbollah has only admitted the deaths of 80 of its members.

But six Hezbollah fighters were reported killed in exchanges with Israel troops not long after the UN brokered ceasefire went into effect at 8 a.m. local time.

© CanWest News Service 2006