THE US Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, spearheading international diplomatic efforts to bring a halt to the fighting in south Lebanon, yesterday indicated that a ceasefire was still some way off. He said the warring sides have many "difficult questions to work through".
Mr Christopher, who held what, he called an excellent meeting with Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Shimon Peres, flew on to Damascus later yesterday, still seeking a formula that would bring a halt to Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" military operation in south Lebanon. Behind him in Jerusalem, the French and Russian foreign ministers held their own protracted mediation meetings with the Israelis last night but were told firmly, if politely, by Mr Peres that the American diplomatic effort was the only one Israel was interested in pursuing. The other initiatives, he said, could only foster confusion.
For all the diplomatic activity, the cross border fighting continued all weekend, although yesterday was probably the quietest day since the Israelis began their assault on April 11th. Katyusha rocket fire into northern Israel, launched by the Hizbullah gunmen Israel has been seeking in vain to flush out of south Lebanon, managed only a handful of salves, and the Israeli shelling that has forced 400,000 southern Lebanese civilians to flee their homes was relatively restrained.
However, Israeli political and military leaders vowed to proceed with the assault until a negotiated solution had been reached that would guarantee a halt to the Hizbullah rocketing. Acknowledging that the shelling that killed Lebanese refugees at a UN base in the village of Qana last Thursday had been "a military mistake", and announcing the establishment of an internal army investigation, the deputy chief of staff, Gen Matan Vilnai, nevertheless made clear that his forces would continue with the offensive as planned, albeit making every effort to ensure no repetition of the tragedy.
Mr Peres, too, gave no sign of being cowed into a unilateral ceasefire as a consequence of Thursday's large scale killing, and the appalling impact it has had on Israel's image throughout the world. When ministers from the junior, left wing coalition party, Meretz, called at a Jerusalem cabinet meeting for a halt to the Israeli assault, Mr Peres cut them short.
International outrage over Thursday's attack has not been widely echoed in Israel, where only the more left wing political groups and the country's Arab citizens have expressed strong protest. In Nazareth on Saturday, eight Arab protesters were arrested and police used tear gas to disperse a demonstration. Arab politicians are threatening to boycott Mr Peres in next month's Israeli general elections in anger at the Lebanon offensive. That is a potent threat since a collapse in support for him among Arab voters would constitute a huge bonus to the opposition candidate, Likud leader Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr Peres initiated the offensive in response to an intensification of Hizbullah attacks on Israeli targets, but he doubtless assumed it would also boost his security credentials before the May 29th polling day. Instead, the civilian killings last Thursday and the failure to silence the Hizbullah gunmen have proved the assault counter productive from a military point of view, and potentially disastrous at the ballot box.
Worse still for Mr Peres, he can hardly call off his troops unilaterally now. To do so would be both deeply humiliating and politically suicidal. Mr Prosper Azran, mayor of the northern town of Kiryat Shmona which has been worst hit by the Katyusha fire, issued a blunt message to Mr Peres yesterday you can't halt the assault on Hizbullah now, he warned, or those thousands of locals who have fled south to central Israel will never come back to their homes.