The possibility of a peaceful Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon looked ever more remote yesterday as Israelis and the Lebanese Shia Hizbullah guerrillas attacked one another for the third day.
The Israeli cabinet met during the afternoon to consider its response after the Hizbullah fired another 20 Katyusha rockets into northern Israel.
The missile attacks were retaliation for Israel's overnight air raids on two Lebanese civilian power stations, the Beirut-Damascus highway, a petrol station and an alleged Hizbullah arms dump. Yesterday morning, Israel also bombed two southern Lebanese villages from which, it said, Hizbullah had launched rockets.
This week marked the first time in 11 months that Hizbullah fired Katyushas across the border. One of the Shia group's salvoes followed the death of two Lebanese Christian women in an Israeli artillery bombardment. Another was in response to the destruction of the power plants. Both demonstrated Hizbullah's claim to represent the entire Lebanese nation, with Syria's blessing.
This week's violence began when Israel bombed a southern Lebanese village, wounding 14 civilians on Wednesday. Israel said it was an accident - an oft-heard explanation which the Lebanese government rejects.
Although the escalation is technically unrelated to Israel's planned withdrawal, it confirms fears that the Israeli retreat will be extremely dangerous. In the absence of a negotiated settlement, the Israelis will leave under fire - and Israel will strike Lebanon with its usual ferocity.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, announced last autumn that Israel would pull out by July 7th, but it took the United Nations six months to react.
The Secretary General's special envoy, Mr Terje Roed-Larsen, is now making his second visit to the region, ostensibly to mediate an agreement on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 425.
Under the 22-year-old resolution, UN troops in southern Lebanon - including the Irish battalion of UNIFIL - are to observe the "unconditional withdrawal" of Israeli forces, then move down to the Lebanese-Israeli border.
The problem is that the withdrawal proposed by Israel is neither complete nor unconditional. The "Chebaa farms" - 18 Lebanese farms seized by Israel since 1967 - were the principal sticking point in Mr Roed-Larsen's talks with Lebanese officials this week.
The fertile strip of land is strategically located where Syria, Lebanon and Israel meet. Lebanon says the farms fall inside its internationally recognised 1923 border. Israel says they are part of the Syrian Golan Heights, which it has no intention of giving up now. Mr Roed-Larsen brought the UN's chief cartographer with him from New York, but has implied he favours the Israeli interpretation.
The Lebanese President, Mr Emile Lahoud, added his complaint about the occupied farms to an earlier memorandum to the UN in which he expressed Lebanon's fear that if an Israeli withdrawal takes place, his country will be expected to absorb hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees to whom UN General Assembly Resolution 194 granted the "right of return" to what is now Israel.
Mr Lahoud has asked the UN whether it is willing to send blue helmets into the Palestinian refugee camps of Sidon and Tyre to disarm thousands of guerrillas. That might please the Lebanese and Israeli governments, but would member countries of UNIFIL - including Ireland - risk their soldiers' lives in such an undertaking?
AFP adds: Israel's security cabinet decided not to launch further reprisals against Lebanon despite a new Hizbullah rocket strike on the north of the country, public radio reported.
But it reserved the right to hit back at the appropriate moment, the radio added, quoting an unnamed senior official.
The radio said members of the inner cabinet were satisfied with the air raids early yesterday, considering they had served their purpose of "punishment and dissuasion".