Senior official says 'there won't be int'l force in Lebanon'

[IndianaGreen]

Israel refuses to even discuss returning Shebaa Farms to Lebanon.

Last update - 02:40 07/08/2006

Senior official says 'there won't be int'l force in Lebanon'

By Aluff Benn, Haaretz Correspondent

A senior official in Jerusalem predicted Sunday that an international force - which Israel demands be stationed in south Lebanon as a buffer to separate Hezbollah from the northern border - will never materialize.

Israel is so concerned about the American-French draft resolution's failure to address the issue of creating an international force for Lebanon. The current draft says merely that a second resolution will be proposed at some later date to authorize deployment of such a force. This, said the senior government source, seems to indicate that "there won't be an international force, because there will never be an agreement on it."

"If they're spitting blood over a declarative resolution , just imagine what will happen when they get to a practical resolution," he said.

<snip>

The Israeli requests including the following:

* Removing all mention of Shaba Farms, so as to avoid linking the cease-fire to an Israeli withdrawal from Shaba. However, government sources said that the United States is unlikely to accede to this.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/747024.html

[MrPrax]

1. Fisk had a good point on this

Robert Fisk: This draft shows who is running America's policy... Israel

"...Had the council demanded an immediate resolution on the future of the Shebaa farms, the Israeli-occupied territory which once belonged to mandate Lebanon - and for whose "liberation" the Hizbollah have fought - the whole fandango might have stood a chance. After all, Shebaa is the only raison d'être that the Hizbollah can produce for continuing their reckless, ruthless, illegal war across the UN blue line in southern Lebanon. But the UN document wished only to see a delineation of Lebanon's borders "including in the Shebaa farms area". There was even a wonderful paragraph - Number 9 for aficionados of UN bumf - which "calls on all parties to co-operate ... with the Security Council". So the Hizbollah are to co-operate, are they, with the austere diplomats of this august and wise body? Isn't that exalting a guerrilla army a little bit more upmarket than it deserves?

No one was fooled and few disagreed with Syria's Walid Moallem when he said the UN's draft resolution was "a recipe for continuing the war". As both the Hizbollah and the Israelis did yesterday, the former killing 13 Israelis and the latter bombing houses in Ansar - once an Israeli POW camp - which destroyed five more Lebanese civilian lives. Mohamed Fneish, a Hizbollah government minister - who scarcely represents all Lebanese but talks as if he does - thundered away about how "we" will abide by it on condition that no Israeli soldiers remains inside Lebanese land."

Independent