IF Hizbullah stopped its rocket attacks on northern Israel, the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, said yesterday, then Israel would cease its military operation, in Lebanon, which yesterday, entered its fourth day.
Addressing the weekly cabinet meeting, Mr Peres, however, said that the military operation, codenamed "Grapes of Wrath", was "not limited by time" and that Israel had the "ability" and the "patience" required to see out Hizbollah attacks.
While Mr Peres yesterday, spoke of a mutual cease fire, senior government officials emphasised that this did not mean that Israel would agree to revert to a set of US brokered understandings between Jerusalem and the Hizbullah, reached after Israel launched a similar assault ink Lebanon in 1993. By creating a "deliberate escalation", Mr Peres told his cabinet, the Hizbullah had violated the 1993 understandings which barred the guerrillas from rocketing northern Israel, but not targets inside Israel's self styled security zone in south Lebanon.
Israel's aim, said military commentators, was to create a completely new situation in south Lebanon, whereby daily Hizbullah attacks on Israeli military targets, launched from Lebanese villages just north of Israel's "security zone", would be considered completely off limits. "We will not stop," said the Foreign Minister, Mr Ehud Barak, "until it is clear that the rules of the game have changed."
Mr Peres reiterated yesterday that Israel had no desire to engage the Lebanese army or Syrian forces in Lebanon, but added that Israel would not accept a situation whereby the Hizbullah operated unimpeded against Israel from sovereign Lebanese territory. Mr Barak said he hoped that the Lebanese government would realise that it had to "change its relationship to terror organisations operating out of its capital".
With Katyusha rockets still raining down on northern Israel yesterday, there was little opposition in the cabinet to the air blitz, with the only note of caution coming from the Environment Minister, Mr Yossi Sarid, a member of the left wing civil rights Meretz Party, who warned against getting bogged down in Lebanon, as happened in Israel's 1982 Lebanon War.
Opposition party leaders, who had loudly attacked Mr Peres for not striking at the Hizbullah in the days before the prime minister gave the green light for "Grapes of Wrath", have exchanged their words of criticism for statements of support. The only vocal critic was Mr Rafael Eitan, head of the Tzomet Party, who suggested that Israel expand its south Lebanon "security zone" northwards so that northern Israel would be completely out of Katyusha range.
Despite strong US backing, international pressure on Israel to end its military operation has been growing. But Mr Peres appeared unmoved yesterday, repeating his warning that if Hizbullah continued its attacks on northern Israel, then Beirut would not be immune from Israeli attacks.
Earlier in the day, after katyusha rockets had damaged power lines near the northern order town of Qiryat Shmona, Israeli jet fighters targeted a relay power station east of Beirut, leaving several neighbourhoods in the Lebanese capital without electricity. "They damaged the power in Qiryat Shmona," Mr Peres said, "and so we targeted the electricity in Beirut."