Guardian Special

Guardian: Hizbullah rockets threaten West Bank
as Israeli troops pour into Lebanon

· Fighters launch barrage of longer-range missiles
· Olmert claims enemy has been largely disarmed

Rory McCarthy in Metula and Jonathan Steele in Tyre
Thursday August 3, 2006

Hizbullah fighters launched a barrage of more than 180 rockets into northern Israel yesterday as thousands of Israeli troops pushed into new villages in ground battles in southern Lebanon.

The rockets - some thought to be Khaibar-1s, four times more powerful than Katyushas - reached as far as the West Bank, landing near the town of Jenin. One Israeli riding his bicycle was killed near Nahariya and another 21 were injured. Forests blazed on the hillsides near the border.

Israeli artillery fired wave after wave of shells over the border in response. At least 7,000 Israeli forces were operating on the ground in southern Lebanon in an increasingly intense fight that is now spread over a wide area.

The military said its troops were for the first time fighting in Mis al-Jabel, Mahbib and Bleida, all villages in the south. Other operations continued in at least five others, including Maroun al-Ras, the first village the Israelis claimed to have captured more than a week ago.

An Israeli airstrike on a Lebanese army base in Sarba, in the south, killed one soldier and injured two others. So far 27 Lebanese troops have been killed, even though the army has not fought in the conflict. The town of Tyre saw heavy exchanges, as Hizbullah fired at least nine rockets and Israeli warships poured shells on to nearby villages.

Despite the number of attacks yesterday, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said Hizbullah had been disarmed "to a large degree". "The infrastructure of Hizbullah has been entirely destroyed," he said.

There is pressure from many politicians and much of the press in Israel for the Israeli army to mount a full ground invasion of the south to force Hizbullah fighters back from the border before any international force is deployed. At least 15,000 reservists have been called up and many were gathering at positions near the border last night.

But yesterday, Israel's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, suggested he did not favour a major ground operation. Ground fighting has already incurred significant casualties for the military. On Tuesday another three soldiers were killed and 25 injured in a fierce clash in Aita al-Shaab. More injuries were reported yesterday. The death of eight soldiers in one ambush in the town of Bint Jbeil last week has left a heavy impression.

"In these kind of operations we pay a price," Gen Halutz said. "We used a strategy of putting in a number of ground forces in the first weeks and we saw how it ended and this is the answer to those people who want us to enter a massive number of forces on the ground immediately. If we can achieve our goals without entering a massive number of forces that's fine. And if not we will enter with all those ground forces that we called up and who are ready to act if necessary."

He said it was ultimately up to the government to decide whether a ground invasion is launched.

In a pre-dawn raid yesterday special forces troops captured five "Hizbullah terrorists" and "intelligence material" in the militia stronghold of Baalbek, at the head of the Beka'a valley, Gen Halutz said.

They attacked an Iranian-funded hospital and ran into fierce resistance. More than 10 people were killed in the ensuing two-hour gunbattle, some ot them inside the hospital. Hizbullah denied that the people captured were members of the militia.

A wave of air strikes that heralded the mission killed at least 19 civilians in the nearby village of Al-Jamaliyeh.

In the hours after the raid, Israel sent automated voice-messages to thousands of Lebanese civilians, warning them that more might come.

"I got a call this morning, and when I answered it I heard a message saying, 'the Israeli army has a long arm and we will use it against Hizbullah everywhere, as we did today'," said Hassan Dbouk, an elected councillor in Tyre.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1836058,00.html

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Fears grow as Tyre runs short of food, fuel - and hope

Jonathan Steele in Tyre
Thursday August 3, 2006

With food and fuel stocks running perilously low, local and international aid officials in this frontline town were preparing yesterday for a siege.

Israel has warned everyone south of Lebanon's Litani river to move north. Some Israeli commanders have said their ground troops may move up to the river in the coming days to hold a huge swath of southern Lebanon until an international force arrives.

Tyre is the largest city south of the Litani. Its prewar population has shrunk dramatically as people have fled to Sidon and Beirut. Civilians escaping from shattered villages across south Lebanon pause briefly in Tyre before fleeing further north.

"Only 25,000 Lebanese are left in the city. We received over 30,000 displaced people, but when they found there was no food, they left," said Hassan Dbouk, a local councillor who is in charge of electricity and water supplies. "We were sent food portions for 3,500 families in the first 10 days. That has been handed out. It contains enough sugar, rice, and other staples for about four days."

The town's water pumping station is operating at 60% capacity. Electricity lines lie in ruins, and the town no longer gets power from the national grid. Fuel for a small power station will run out in four days unless new stocks can be brought in.

Workers hired by the International Committee of the Red Cross were racing against the clock yesterday to unload food parcels from a chartered freighter. All marine traffic requires clearance from Israel and ships have to leave by 5.30pm. The previous ship sailed back to Cyprus with some of its cargo still on board because it failed to meet the deadline.

Clearance is also needed for land convoys. The biggest problem is getting food and other supplies to inland villages.

The ICRC has taken over one petrol station in Tyre, covering it with Red Cross flags, to maintain supplies exclusively to ambulances and hospitals. But it is worried that prolonged military activity might deprive people of food and water, commodities it says they are entitled to under the Geneva convention.

Casualities

Israeli victims yesterday

Civilians One killed; 21 wounded

Military At least 17 wounded

Victims since outbreak:

Civilians 19 killed; Military 36 killed;

All wounded 1,262 (46 still in hospital)

Lebanese victims yesterday

Civilians 30 killed; Military 1 killed

Hizbullah 4 killed (IDF says 10); 5 captured

Victims since outbreak:

Civilians 545 killed; 3,000+ wounded

Military 26 killed; Hizbullah 46 killed (IDF says 300+)

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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How Israel's gung-ho leaders turned victory into calamity

Our government, in its desperation to outgun its predecessor, spurned a glorious chance to come out of this with honour

Nehemia Shtrasler
Thursday August 3, 2006

There was one moment during the war when we had the upper hand. It was the moment when Israel had succeeded in striking Hizbullah with strong and surprising force, Haifa was peaceful and the number of casualties was small. That was the right moment to stop the war, declare victory and move on to the diplomatic track.

This opportunity came when the G8 convened in St Petersburg on July 14, two days after the fighting broke out. The G8 formulated a four-point plan, and nothing could have been better for Israel. According to that plan, the three Israeli soldiers abducted to Gaza and Lebanon would be returned unharmed, the Katyusha rocket fire against Israel would stop, Israel would halt its military operations and pull back its forces, and it would also release the Hamas ministers and MPs.

The G8 statement declared that the full responsibility for the crisis fell on Hamas and Hizbullah and asked the United Nations security council immediately to formulate a programme for the full implementation of resolution 1559. The statement called for the deployment of the Lebanese army in south Lebanon and suggested looking into the possibility of bringing an international force into the region. Israel and Lebanon were also asked to launch diplomatic talks.

The international atmosphere was also pro-Israel, even among the hostile media. Israel received international legitimacy for its response to the killing and abduction of its soldiers inside its sovereign territory, and all the politicians, especially Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, were amazed at how much the world loved us.

But Olmert and Amir Peretz, the defence minister, did not know when to quit. They wanted to show the public that they, the "civilians", were more courageous than their predecessors, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. That is why they continued the war in order to attain goals that from the outset were unattainable.

This does not mean that if Israel had adopted the G8 proposal, the problem of Hizbullah would have been resolved. That would not have happened. That can only be resolved at the diplomatic level, with an Israeli-Syrian-Lebanese agreement. But at least it would have prevented us from deteriorating to the current situation, with its accompanying feeling of failure, the dead and the wounded, the attack on Israel's moral standing, the hatred towards it throughout the world and the damage to Israel's military deterrence.

Israel has not managed to crush Hizbullah and, worse, it has strengthened Hizbullah's standing in Lebanon and the Arab world, which are seeing how a tiny guerrilla organisation has succeeded in standing up to the mighty Israel defence forces and causing Israel serious losses among its civilian population. That is a dangerous precedent.

The Olmert-Peretz plan was to shell and demolish south Lebanon and south Beirut until the Lebanese public demand that its government vomit Hizbullah out from its midst. It appears that, like a number of other Israeli leaders, they did not understand how much killing, poverty and distress people are willing to take, as long as their honour is not harmed, as long as they are not humiliated. And indeed, instead of demanding that Hizbullah be dismantled, the people of Lebanon want revenge, and they want it now. That is their response to the killing of 750 civilians and the destruction of thousands of homes, bridges, roads, villages and towns, setting Lebanon back by 20 years.

Now, after the tragic events in Qana that killed some 60 civilians, even Israel's greatest ally has changed direction and says it wants a speedy ceasefire. Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, has declared that Hizbullah's victory is the victory of the entire Lebanese people and that if Israel remains in south Lebanon, he will turn the Lebanese army against it. Siniora even spoke about a ceasefire without any agreement.

Other Lebanese, too - including some who are firm opponents of Hizbullah, such as Walid Jumblatt and Amin Gemayel - have also condemned Israel. Based on what has happened in the field, nothing remains of the grandiose goals of the beginning of the war.

Soon we will start to long for the excellent agreement offered by the G8 at the beginning of the war.

· Today that, too, is unattainable. Nehemia Shtrasler is a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, where this article first appeared
www.haaretz.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1835894,00.html

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638 ways to kill Castro

The CIA's outlandish plots to bump off the Cuban dictator would put 007 to shame ... poison pills, toxic cigars and exploding molluscs. Once he even offered to shoot himself, reports Duncan Campbell

Duncan Campbell
Thursday August 3, 2006

For nearly half a century, the CIA and Cuban exiles have been trying to devise ways to assassinate Fidel Castro, who is currently laid low in Cuba following an operation for intestinal bleeding. None of the plots, of course, succeeded, but, then, many of them would probably be rejected as too fanciful for a James Bond novel.

Fabian Escalante, who, for a time, had the job of keeping El Commandante alive, has calculated that there have been a total of 638 attempts on Castro's life. That may sound like a staggeringly high figure, but then the CIA were pretty keen on killing him. As Wayne Smith, former head of the US interests section in Havana, pointed out recently, Cuba had the effect on the US that a full moon has on a werewolf. It seems highly likely that if the CIA had had access to a werewolf, it would have tried smuggling it into the Sierra Maestra at some point over the past 40-odd years.

The most spectacular of the plots against Castro will be examined in a Channel 4 documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro, as well as in a companion book of the same name written by the now-retired Escalante - a man who, while in his post as head of the Cuban secret service, played a personal part in heading off a number of the plots. While the exploding cigar that was intended to blow up in Castro's face is perhaps the best-known of the attempts on his life, others have been equally bizarre.

Knowing his fascination for scuba-diving off the coast of Cuba, the CIA at one time invested in a large volume of Caribbean molluscs. The idea was to find a shell big enough to contain a lethal quantity of explosives, which would then be painted in colours lurid and bright enough to attract Castro's attention when he was underwater. Documents released under the Clinton administration confirm that this plan was considered but, like many others, did not make it far from the drawing-board. Another aborted plot related to Castro's underwater activities was for a diving-suit to be prepared for him that would be infected with a fungus that would cause a chronic and debilitating skin disease.

One of the reasons there have been so many attempts on his life is that he has been in power for so long. Attempts to kill Castro began almost immediately after the 1959 revolution, which brought him to power. In 1961, when Cuban exiles with the backing of the US government tried to overthrow him in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the aim was to assassinate Fidel and Raul Castro and Che Guevara. Two years later, on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated, an agent who had been given a pen-syringe in Paris was sent to kill Castro, but failed.

On one occasion, a former lover was recruited to kill him, according to Peter Moore, producer of the new film. The woman was given poison pills by the CIA, and she hid them in her cold cream jar. But the pills melted and she decided that, all things considered, putting cold cream in Castro's mouth while he slept was a bad idea. According to this woman, Castro had already guessed that she was aiming to kill him and he duly offered her his own pistol. "I can't do it, Fidel," she told him.

No one apparently could. This former lover is far from the only person to have failed to poison Castro: at one point the CIA prepared bacterial poisons to be placed in Castro's hand-kerchief or in his tea and coffee, but nothing came of it. A CIA poison pill had to be abandoned when it failed to disintegrate in water during tests.

The most recent serious assassination attempt that we know of came in 2000 when Castro was due to visit Panama. A plot was hatched to put 200lb (90kg) of high explosives under the podium where he was due to speak. That time, Castro's personal security team carried out their own checks on the scene, and helped to abort the plot. Four men, including Luis Posada, a veteran Cuban exile and former CIA operative, were jailed as a result, but they were later given a pardon and released from jail.

As it happens, Posada is the most dedicated of those who have tried and failed to get rid of the Cuban president. He is currently in jail in El Paso, Texas, in connection with extradition attempts by Venezuela and Cuba to get him to stand trial for allegedly blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976. His case is due to come back before the courts later this month but few imagine that he will be sent to stand trial, and he appears confident that he will be allowed to resume his retirement in Florida, a place where many of the unsuccessful would-be assassins have made their homes.

Not all the attempts on Castro's life have been fancifully complicated: many have been far simpler and owe more to the methods of the mafia who used to hang out in the casinos and hotels of Havana in the 40s and 50s, than they do to James Bond. At one time the CIA even approached underworld figures to try to carry out the killing. One of Castro's old classmates planned to shoot him dead in the street in broad daylight much in the manner of a mafia hit. One would-be sniper at the University of Havana was caught by security men. But the shooters were no more successful than the poisoners and bombers.

Officially, the US has abandoned its attempt to kill its arch-enemy, but Cuban security are not taking any chances. Any gifts sent to the ailing leader as he lies ill this week will be carefully scrutinised, just as they were when those famous exploding cigars were being constructed by the CIA's technical services department in the early 60s. (They never got to him, by the way, those cigars contaminated with botulinum toxin, but they are understood to have been made using his favourite brand. Castro gave up smoking in 1985.)

All these plots inevitably changed the way Castro lived his life. While in his early years in office, he often walked alone in the street, but that practice had to change. Since then doubles have been used, and over the decades Castro has moved between around 20 different addresses in Cuba to make it harder for any potential hitmen to reach him.

Meanwhile, jokes about Castro's apparent indestructibility have become commonplace in Cuba. One, recounted in the New Yorker this week, tells of him being given a present of a Galapagos turtle. Castro declines it after he learns that it is likely to live only 100 years. "That's the problem with pets," he says. "You get attached to them and then they die on you".

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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