Northern Israel

WASHINGTON -- As U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf watch for new signs of mischief by Iraq, the ambassador from neighboring Syria is eager to remind Americans that his own country's border with Israel remains a hot spot, too."I don't think that the situation [of] 'no war, no peace' is serving any side," said Walid Al-Moualem, referring to the enduring stalemate in the Israeli-Syrian peace process.Besides a costly arms race, the impasse could lead to the "possibility of miscalculation [and] misunderstanding, which leads to conflict," he warned in an interview in his office.

THE editorial ''Going backward in the Middle East'' (Aug. 24) faults Israel for planning to build a dam in a location which would be ''provoking Syria to intransigence.'' Perhaps the writer does not recall what happened in April 1996.Despite having the conciliatory government of Prime Minister Shimon Peres in power in Israel, Syria unleashed its proxy army of Hezbollah terrorists against northern Israel.The Peres government was prepared to relinquish most if not all of the Golan Heights in exchange for peace.

WASHINGTON -- The United States took new steps to calm the security fears of nervous Israelis yesterday as President Clinton declared that no one should be allowed to derail the Arab-Israeli peace through violence and terror.Two days after a U.S.-brokered cease-fire went into effect on the Israeli-Lebanese border, the administration made a concerted effort to reassure Israel of U.S. support for its safety. In so doing, the White House also lent implicit political support to visiting Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in his fierce re-election battle.

QANA, Lebanon -- Israeli artillery raked a United Nations peacekeepers camp filled with refugees yesterday, turning their haven into a deathtrap for at least 100, many of them women and children.The carnage brought a sharp international outcry, and Israel said last night that it will agree to a U.S. call to stop bombarding Lebanon if Hezbollah guerrillas halt the shelling of northern Israel.A dozen heavy shells crashed in midafternoon through the tin roofs of the refugee shelters at the U.N. camp.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- The crimson flag of Hezbollah wrapped the "martyr's" coffin yesterday, and the whole box was sheathed in plastic. Lowered into the ground amid chants of "God is Great," the coffin will be dug up and reburied -- without the plastic -- in southern Lebanon when the Israeli bombardment ends.The occupant of the coffin, a Hezbollah fighter named Ahmad Cherri killed by a rocket from an Israeli jet, was a "fair" fatality, according to convoluted rules of the conflict in south Lebanon.

WASHINGTON -- After past Israeli attacks into Lebanon, Washington reactions usually were models of diplomatic vagueness, calling on all sides to show restraint and deploring the region's cycle of violence.Not this time.Since the Israelis began military strikes against Hezbollah (Party of God) last week, the Clinton administration has been solidly and bluntly behind them, placing blame for the crisis solely on rocket attacks into northern Israel by the Lebanon-based guerrillas. Civilian casualties caused by Israeli strikes have brought no direct U.S. criticism.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- A diplomatic solution to the conflict in Lebanon remained elusive yesterday, as the fighting's victims were mourned, Israeli planes bombed new targets south of the capital and Hezbollah guerrillas fired rockets into Israel, wounding two Israelis.U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher held five hours of talks in Damascus, Syria -- his second trip there in two days -- and then returned to Jerusalem. But so far he has failed to achieve a cease-fire in the hostilities that have raged for 12 days.

IF RECENT history is any guide, Israel may make a costly error if it agrees to stationing American troops as peacekeepers on the Golan Heights. A decision on American deployment -- as part of a prospective peace agreement between Israel and Syria -- is expected in the near future.If negotiations between Damascus and Jerusalem lead to a treaty, Syria, as a precondition, will demand that Israel totally evacuate the Golan. Such a step would pose a serious security problem for the Jewish state.

JERUSALEM -- An agreement that had limited fighting in southern Lebanon appears on the verge of collapse after Hezbollah guerrillas shelled northern Israel in retaliation for Israeli attacks in Lebanon.The collapse of the understanding could lead to a large-scale bombardment of Lebanese towns similar to the one Israel carried out in 1993.At least three Lebanese and two Israelis have died since Friday in the tit-for-tat shelling spilling over both sides of the southern Lebanon zone occupied by Israeli troops.

JERUSALEM -- Israel readied yesterday for likely retaliation for its kidnapping of a Lebanese guerrilla leader in a pre-dawn raid Saturday.The government instructed its foreign diplomats to increase security and placed its forces in northern Israel on alert for rocket attacks and guerrilla infiltration from Lebanon.The last time Israel singled out a Lebanese Muslim leader -- killing Hezbollah chief Sheik Abbas Musawi and his family in a helicopter attack inside Lebanon in February 1992 -- Muslim groups rained hundreds of small rockets on northern Israel.

JERUSALEM -The Israeli military said yesterday that it had opened an investigation into possible troop misconduct during the Gaza war after the head of a school for future recruits relayed stories of civilian killings and property destruction told by graduates during a recent gathering. The accounts were published in the Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Maariv yesterday. Haaretz ran excerpts of statements by two squad commanders who told of Palestinian civilians being shot even though they did not appear to pose a threat to Israeli troops.

WASHINGTON - Rockets launched yesterday into northern Israel from a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon heightened fears that the border region is on the verge of a broader new conflict between Israel and Islamic militants. Mideast diplomats rushed to point out that the rockets were launched not by Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based radical militia that fought Israel to a bloody standstill in 2006, but by independent Palestinians. Others saw a chilling reminder that events in the volatile region can easily spin out of control and that serious fighting could erupt on Israel's northern border as the violence in Gaza intensifies.

JERUSALEM -- An official panel of inquiry found yesterday that Israel's failure to win the 2006 war in Lebanon stemmed from "flawed conduct" and "serious failings" by its political and military leadership, but it concluded that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acted in what he thought was the country's best interests. The final report on the panel's 16-month investigation cast no blame on any leader. Critics of the embattled prime minister said that made it less likely he would be forced to resign.

JERUSALEM -- An Arab former legislator is suspected of committing treason and espionage by giving advice to Hezbollah guerrillas during the war in Lebanon last summer, Israeli police officials said yesterday as they released new details of their investigation. Azmi Bishara, an outspoken advocate for Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians, passed information to Hezbollah and encouraged the group to launch rockets deep into Israeli territory during the 34-day conflict, the police alleged.

KIRYAT SHEMONA, Israel -- A day after the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, it was too quiet in this northern Israel town for Eytan Skyan. Gone were the squealing air raid sirens, the thundering artillery barrages and the exploding Katyusha rockets. But to Skyan's ears, there were not enough sounds of rebuilding - the hammering of nails, the paving of roads - to demonstrate that the Israeli community hardest hit in the conflict with Hezbollah was stirring back to life. "Nothing is happening," said Skyan, who returned here hours after the cease-fire to discover that his clothing store had been damaged by a rocket fired from Lebanon.

JERUSALEM -- Israel suffered its worst military death toll in a month of fighting in southern Lebanon as 15 soldiers were killed yesterday during ground skirmishes with Hezbollah guerrillas. Hours earlier, as diplomats failed to forge a cease-fire agreement acceptable to both sides, the Israeli Security Cabinet approved an expansion of the army's ground offensive, heralding a possible intensification in Israel's war against the Hezbollah militant group. Hundreds of Israeli tanks, missile launchers and other armor massed in northern Israel, firing a thunderous barrage of artillery into Lebanon as soldiers crossed the border from the Metulla area in larger numbers than in previous days.

After an earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Java in May, donors responded. World Vision U.S., a Christian aid organization, quickly received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to help those left devastated by what nature had wrought. To aid the more than 700,000 displaced in Lebanon during fighting that has raged between Israel and Hezbollah over the past three weeks, the call has gone out again. This time, donors have been "lukewarm," a senior official says, offering $160,000 in donations to assist those injured and displaced by the attacks.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared yesterday that Israel had no intention of ending its battle against Hezbollah anytime soon, despite a fragile lull in fighting that allowed some humanitarian supplies to reach civilians in war-battered Lebanon. Israeli officials said they would expand the ground offensive and described a 48-hour hiatus in major airstrikes as a "humanitarian gesture" rather than any prelude to a speedy cease-fire, which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had said could be reached this week.

JERUSALEM -- Israel agreed to halt bombing for 48 hours and allow besieged civilians safe passage out of southern Lebanon, U.S. officials said yesterday - a concession granted under intense pressure after one of its airstrikes hit a house full of women and children, killing at least 56 people. The strike, the deadliest in Israel's 19-day offensive, derailed U.S. diplomatic efforts in the region, at least for now, forcing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cancel a trip to Beirut, Lebanon, and galvanized the strongest demands yet for an immediate end to the fighting.

KIBBUTZ MERKHAVYA, Israel -- Nitzam Grossman remembers from the comfort of his living room his Israeli army days in southern Lebanon during the early '90s, dismissed now with a small shrug. It didn't then seem like a war. The last time his kibbutz buried one of its young men because of a combat death was in 1982, he recalled. It was during what Israelis may decide to rename the First Lebanon War. Twenty-four years later, the kibbutz has suffered another combat loss, its first in the Second Lebanon War, accompanied by a round of introspection and worry about whether the future will bring more insecurity than the present.