The gunfire continued even after Israel withdrew from the villages-without having accomplished much. Rushing back into the front lines, the Shiites fired a barrage of Katyusha rockets into Israel; one landed in a collective farm, killing a 5-year-old girl. It seemed safe to predict more strikes back and forth across Israel’s “security zone” in southern Lebanon. To the south, meanwhile, a Palestinian stabbed four Israelis, killing one of them, a woman immigrant from Russia. The attack apparently had nothing to do with Lebanon, but it put more pressure on the Israelis to retaliate.
Israel started the latest spasm of Lebanese violence with a killing that was sure to inflame the Shiites for months to come. Early last week Israeli helicopter gunships pounced on a convoy carrying the Hizbullah leader, Sheik Abbas Musawi, near the Lebanese village of Jibsheet (map). An Israeli missile hit Musawi’s Mercedes, incinerating the Shiite cleric, along with his wife and their 6-year-old son. Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Arens, quickly boasted: “This is a message to all the terrorist organizations that whoever opens an account with us, we will be the ones to close the account.” The Shiites answered by electing a more radical cleric to succeed Musawi and by bombarding northern Israel with Soviet-made Katyushas, eventually prompting the Israeli incursion.
The decision to kill Musawi was made late last year. According to Israeli press reports, the go-ahead came in a telephone call two weekends ago between Arens and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Shiite prisoners had told the Israelis that Musawi would attend a ceremony in mid-February commemorating the “martyrdom” of another Muslim cleric eight years ago. As the date approached, the Israeli army was embarrassed by the killing of three of its soldiers. The killers apparently were Palestinians, not Lebanese Shiites. But some blamed the army for lax security that enabled attackers to hack the three men to death with knives and bayonets.
Shamir, meanwhile, had political problems. In a party election he stood off two challengers for the leadership of his Likud bloc, which faces national elections next June 23. Shamir got only 46.4 percent of the vote. Now he faces another challenge from the newly elected leader of the Labor Party, former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who has the advantage of being a hawkish dove. A military man, Rabin has a reputation for dealing firmly with the Arabs, but he favors autonomy for Palestinians in the occupied territories and a freeze on new Jewish settlements there. Shamir also could be hurt by his failure, so far, to extract a $10 billion loan guarantee from the United States to build housing for immigrants flooding in from the former Soviet Union. If he is to prevail in the clash of “the two Yitzhaks,” Shamir cannot afford to let up on Hizbullah.
Although it deplored the violence, Washington shed no tears over Musawi’s death. The Hizbullah leader publicly claimed credit for masterminding the 1983 bombing of the Beirut barracks in which 241 U.S. servicemen were killed. Hizbullah members were responsible for the long ordeal of Western hostages in Lebanon. Musawi was an ally of Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and he was attempting to improve his movement’s relations with Syria, the dominant outside power in Lebanon. By killing him, Israel may have hoped to delay an alliance between the Shiites and the Syrians.
The new outbreak of killing in southern Lebanon was not expected to stop the next round of the Mideast peace conference, which was scheduled to resume in Washington this week. “Nobody can afford not to come,” said Judith Kipper, a Mideast expert at the Brookings Institution. “No one wants to be blamed for the failure of the talks.” But the discussion is likely to be mostly procedural as the Israelis and the Lebanese try to sort themselves out. “We tell the Jews that war is the only language between us,” Musawi’s successor, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, told his followers. In that language, both sides were all too fluent.
title: “Across The Line Israel Hits Hezbullah” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-27” author: “Austin Lehmann”
The gunfire continued even after Israel withdrew from the villages-without having accomplished much. Rushing back into the front lines, the Shiites fired a barrage of Katyusha rockets into Israel; one landed in a collective farm, killing a 5-year-old girl. It seemed safe to predict more strikes back and forth across Israel’s “security zone” in southern Lebanon. To the south, meanwhile, a Palestinian stabbed four Israelis, killing one of them, a woman immigrant from Russia. The attack apparently had nothing to do with Lebanon, but it put more pressure on the Israelis to retaliate.
Israel started the latest spasm of Lebanese violence with a killing that was sure to inflame the Shiites for months to come. Early last week Israeli helicopter gunships pounced on a convoy carrying the Hizbullah leader, Sheik Abbas Musawi, near the Lebanese village of Jibsheet (map). An Israeli missile hit Musawi’s Mercedes, incinerating the Shiite cleric, along with his wife and their 6-year-old son. Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Arens, quickly boasted: “This is a message to all the terrorist organizations that whoever opens an account with us, we will be the ones to close the account.” The Shiites answered by electing a more radical cleric to succeed Musawi and by bombarding northern Israel with Soviet-made Katyushas, eventually prompting the Israeli incursion.
The decision to kill Musawi was made late last year. According to Israeli press reports, the go-ahead came in a telephone call two weekends ago between Arens and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Shiite prisoners had told the Israelis that Musawi would attend a ceremony in mid-February commemorating the “martyrdom” of another Muslim cleric eight years ago. As the date approached, the Israeli army was embarrassed by the killing of three of its soldiers. The killers apparently were Palestinians, not Lebanese Shiites. But some blamed the army for lax security that enabled attackers to hack the three men to death with knives and bayonets.
Shamir, meanwhile, had political problems. In a party election he stood off two challengers for the leadership of his Likud bloc, which faces national elections next June 23. Shamir got only 46.4 percent of the vote. Now he faces another challenge from the newly elected leader of the Labor Party, former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who has the advantage of being a hawkish dove. A military man, Rabin has a reputation for dealing firmly with the Arabs, but he favors autonomy for Palestinians in the occupied territories and a freeze on new Jewish settlements there. Shamir also could be hurt by his failure, so far, to extract a $10 billion loan guarantee from the United States to build housing for immigrants flooding in from the former Soviet Union. If he is to prevail in the clash of “the two Yitzhaks,” Shamir cannot afford to let up on Hizbullah.
Although it deplored the violence, Washington shed no tears over Musawi’s death. The Hizbullah leader publicly claimed credit for masterminding the 1983 bombing of the Beirut barracks in which 241 U.S. servicemen were killed. Hizbullah members were responsible for the long ordeal of Western hostages in Lebanon. Musawi was an ally of Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and he was attempting to improve his movement’s relations with Syria, the dominant outside power in Lebanon. By killing him, Israel may have hoped to delay an alliance between the Shiites and the Syrians.
The new outbreak of killing in southern Lebanon was not expected to stop the next round of the Mideast peace conference, which was scheduled to resume in Washington this week. “Nobody can afford not to come,” said Judith Kipper, a Mideast expert at the Brookings Institution. “No one wants to be blamed for the failure of the talks.” But the discussion is likely to be mostly procedural as the Israelis and the Lebanese try to sort themselves out. “We tell the Jews that war is the only language between us,” Musawi’s successor, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, told his followers. In that language, both sides were all too fluent.
