ZoneFlood

From Isracast:

When Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared there is no cease-fire, IDF ground forces had started a push to the Litani River in southern Lebanon.

Although there is a wide consensus in Israel to continue the campaign against Hezbollah, not all Knesset members agree. Yossi Beilin of the left-wing Meretz party says its a mistake to launch the ground operation.

The Litani River is 30km North of the border with Israel, and Lebanon has long suspected that Israel had designs on the river or its tributaries.

The U.N. Security Council called Sunday for an end to violence in Lebanon and expressed “extreme shock and distress” over Israel’s bombing of civilians in the village of Qana which killed 56 people, almost all of them women and children.

But the presidential statement, adopted unanimously by the 15-member council in an emergency session, stopped short of condemning the Israeli airstrike Sunday.

The council said it “strongly deplores this loss of innocent life and the killing of civilians in the present conflict” and called for the council to work without delay to adopt a resolution for a lasting settlement of the crisis.

“The Security Council expresses its extreme shock and distress at the shelling by the Israeli Defense Forces of a residential building in Qana, in southern Lebanon, which has caused the killing of dozens of civilians, mostly children, and injured many others,” it said.

Earlier Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had called again for an immediate halt to violence between Israel and Hezbollah, telling the council he was “deeply dismayed” that his previous appeals went unheeded.

He said the region was becoming impatient that the council, the most powerful U.N. body, had yet to issue a meaningful response after three weeks of war in Lebanon.

“Action is needed now before many more children, women and men become casualties of a conflict over which they have no control,” Annan said.

 [Associated Press | July 30, 2006]

Israel has agreed to a 48-hour halt in aerial activity over southern Lebanon, a U.S. official said Sunday amid widespread outrage over an Israeli airstrike that killed at least 56 Lebanese, mostly women and children, when it leveled a building where they had taken shelter.

The announcement of the pause in overflights — made by State Department spokesman Adam Ereli — appeared to reflect American pressure on Israel. Ereli, who was in Israel with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said Israel has reserved the right to hit targets if it learns that attacks are being prepared against them. There was no immediate confirmation by Israeli officials.

The stunning bloodshed in Lebanon earlier on Sunday prompted Rice to cut short her Mideast mission and intensified world demands on Washington to back an immediate end to the fighting.

[Associated Press | July 30, 2006]

There’s a mix of public and private communications going on between Jerusalem and Damascus. Israel is trying to assure Damascus that they don’t plan or want to expand the war to include Syria. Syria is clearly worried that they will and has their troops on full alert. Israel is also warning in no uncertain terms that Syria getting involved will spark massive retaliation.

But there are persistent signs that the US is egging Israel on to bring the war to Damascus.

Here’s a clip from the end of an article today in the Jerusalem Post …

[Israeli] Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

And there are other ominous indications of the US pressing for expansion the Israelis don’t seem to want.

There’s more here than the US not wanting a ceasefire before meaningful changes on the ground have happened in south Lebanon. Or at least I fear there is. This started because Israel doesn’t want and won’t tolerate a menacing militia building up on their northern border and lashing out with occasional raids or missile attacks, especially in the context of withdrawals from other areas.

[Talking Points Memo | July 30, 2006]

From Israel’s Ynet News:

Despite the events in Qana, the US is decided in its rejection of an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hizbullah. Minutes after speaking on the telephone with US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice (who currently in Israel), US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns, declared that the United States is not interested in repeating former mistakes.

From early BBC Reports:

 

Elderly, women and children were among those killed in the raid, which wrought destruction over a wide area. The BBC’s Fergal Keane at the scene saw two small boys pulled from the rubble.

The number of wounded appears small, he says - which indicates very few survived.

Reporters spoke of survivors screaming in grief and anger, as some scrabbled through the debris with bare hands.

“We want this to stop,” a villager shouted.

“May God have mercy on the children. They came here to escape the fighting.”

From AP:

The Mediterranean is threatened by its worst ever environmental disaster after Israel’s bombing of a power plant in Lebanon sent thousands of tonnes of fuel gushing into the sea

From the Independent:

A 12-year-old boy dead on a stretcher. A mother in shock and disbelief after her son was shot dead for standing on their roof. A phone rings and a voice in broken Arabic orders residents to abandon their home on pain of death.

Those are snapshots of a day in Gaza where Israel is waging a hidden war, as the world looks the other way, focusing on Lebanon.

It is a war of containment and control that has turned the besieged Strip into a prison with no way in or out, and no protection from an fearsome battery of drones, precision missiles, tank shells and artillery rounds.

As of last night, 29 people had been killed in the most concentrated 48 hours of violence since an Israeli soldier was abducted by Palestinian militants just more than a month ago.

The operation is codenamed “Samson’s Pillars”, a collective punishment of the 1.4 million Gazans, subjecting them to a Lebanese-style offensive that has targeted the civilian infrastructure by destroying water mains, the main power station and bridges.

From the BBC:

Israel says it will keep control over an area in southern Lebanon until an international force can be deployed.

Defence Minister Amir Peretz said: “We have no other option. We have to build a new security strip that will be a cover for our forces.”

From USA Today:

Israeli warplanes struck a minibus carrying people fleeing the fighting in southern Lebanon, killing three people.