ISRAEL'S long expected blitz on Lebanon a day of air attacks that hit Beirut for the first time in almost 14 years had last night produced near stalemate as the Hizbullah militia threatened retaliation against Israel.
The Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr Rafiq Hariri, warned that the vicious circle of violence which left at least four dead and six wounded across Lebanon, could run out of control unless the Israelis, who said their raids were in retaliation for an earlier Hizbullah attack with Katyusha rockets, resolved to withdraw their occupation troops from the south of the country.
By evening the Israeli assault seemed to have achieved little. Of the four known dead, three were civilians one of them a 27 year old woman killed in her car by a missile firing Israeli helicopter near the Jiye power station while an air raid on a supposed Hizbullah office outside the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek did no more than destroy the municipal rubbish dump.
Despite Israel's much trumpeted destruction of a terrorist operational nerve centre, the Hizbullah headquarters in Beirut, the high rise Majlis al Shura council building, appeared to be untouched. Militiamen, however, prevented reporters from moving closer than 200 metres from the building.
Indeed, the only military casualty was a Lebanese soldier manning a checkpoint south of the city of Tyre who was killed when the Israelis bombed an army anti aircraft unit which had been firing at their helicopters.
The Israelis later warned the Lebanese army to "stay neutral" in their attack against the Hizbullah, but the Lebanese Minister of Defence, who declared the dead soldier a "martyr", ordered his brigades in southern Lebanon to fire at Israeli forces in the air or on the ground.
Presumably aware of the civilian casualties that would be wrought by the air assault, an Israeli army statement warned during the day that civilians who live next to Hizbullah activist centres and homes may be hurt.
But the radio station of Israel's proxy South Lebanon Army militia said that electricity stations and water systems could be attacked, suggesting that Israel's real intention was to threaten the Lebanese government with disaster unless it disarmed the Islamic Resistance movement in southern Lebanon.
Lebanon is still trying to secure massive international investment to finance its post civil war reconstruction.
Mr Hariri said last night that attacks on the Israelis inside southern Lebanon would continue unless Israel abided by UN Security Council resolution 425, which calls for the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.
Syria called the day of air attacks "an act of aggression that would damage the Middle East peace process".
What caused deep concern for Mr Hariri, however, was not so much the casualties but the assault on Beirut. Not since the hot August days of the Israeli siege of 1982, when their enemies were the PLO, now their new allies, have the Israelis attacked the Lebanese capital.
By the standards of 14 years ago, yesterday's missile firing helicopters were a mere pin prick, but they were intended, as both the Lebanese and the Syrians knew, to carry a message further attacks on Beirut could be less restrained, more bloody and longer lasting so why don't the Lebanese and Syrian governments disarm the Hizbullah who are causing so many casualties among Israel's occupation troops in the south?
As Mr Hariri made clear last night, neither Beirut nor Damascus planned any such action.
In 1993, after Israel responded to the killing of eight occupation soldiers with an air bombardment that slaughtered 123 Lebanese civilians, an American/Syrian brokered agreement between Israel and the Hizbullah stipulated that neither side would attack the other's civilians unless the other did so first.
Last month the Israelis apologised for killing two young civilian men in the village of Yater for fear that the Hizbullah might fire Katyusha rockets over the border.
Last weekend a boy was killed by a bomb in the neighbouring village of Bradchit. Hizbullah's belief that the explosives were command detonated by the Israelis prompted the Katyusha attack which wounded 13 civilians in Galilee and provoked yesterday's counter counter retaliation by Israel.
Both the Lebanese and Syrians realise that Mr Shimon Peres, the Israeli Prime Minister, is under massive pressure prior to the May 29th elections, to show that he can tame the Hizbullah.
But the militia's determination to go on fighting the Israelis in side Lebanon because this remains its most prominent raison d'etre means that the Israelis are likely to face retaliation in response to their own retaliation, a cycle of mutual revenge which, as Mr Hariri said, can become self generating.
Both the Hizbullah and security sources in southern Lebanon suggested last night that further Katyusha attacks would be made against Israel in response to yesterday's raids. Rumours in Beirut spoke of a planned Israeli commando raid on the capital however fanciful the notion, it showed how dangerous the crisis has now become in Lebanon.
Patsy Mc Garry add: As many as 3,000 inhabitants of Tibnin and Haris, which are in the area of south Lebanon under the control of Irish UN troops, were evacuating the towns last night, and going northwards towards Beirut.