THEY MADE IT SOUND SO CLEAN. Operation Grapes of Wrath, Israel’s assault on Shiite guerrillas in south Lebanon, was calculated to spare the blood of innocents, the briefers in Jerusalem insisted. Radio broadcasts had warned villagers to flee north to Beirut. Troops manning a new and improved cannon, the tread-mounted Dohar howitzer, were dropping smoke shells on their targets before a bombardment, to give noncombatants another chance to flee. Officials boasted that a U.S.-built targeting system, the TQP-37 Firefinder, could pinpoint enemy positions with surgical precision.
It took just moments to destroy that illusion. More than 800 refugees were packed into a U.N. compound in the south Lebanon village of Qana last week when guerrillas hidden 350 yards away fired two Katyusha rockets and eight mortar rounds toward the Israeli border. Eighteen minutes later, Israeli gunners replied with a barrage of 40 shells–six of which slammed into the U.N. compound. A recreation hall, a conference center and a thatched recreation hut built by Fijian troops went up in flames. About 100 people died in a scene of bedlam; many were blown to pieces. “Tell America! Tell them what happened here!” cried Khadija Hamdi, her ankles stained red from the puddles of blood.
Satellites had already done that, flashing TV images of the carnage around the world. And it trumped Israel’s own high-tech strategy for wringing concessions from its most implacable enemies–Iran and Syria–without risking its own troops. Bill Clinton had stood by for seven days as Israel used its jets, helicopters, warships and a tide of 400,000 refugees to squeeze Lebanon in the hope that its chief patron, Syria, would feel compelled to leash the Iranian-backed Hizbullah (Party of God) in south Lebanon. But after the Qana killings, Clinton called for an immediate ceasefire–and sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to a Damascus summit to negotiate one. “It’s obvious now that there’s almost no way to contain the loss of innocent life,” Clinton said. Syria’s Hafez Assad hadn’t blinked.
The operation initially gave Prime Minister Shimon Peres a boost as he prepared to face voters incensed by recent suicide bombings within Israel. A diplomat, Peres lacked the aura of toughness Israeli voters look for in their leaders, and he had never before commanded an army; as the operation unfolded, he cut a dashing figure in his bomber-style jacket, meeting his generals on the border. More than Peres’s own career was at stake: the May 29 election could decide whether or not Israel finalizes a peace settlement with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. That’s why Washington withheld even its usual appeal for Israeli “restraint.” But Qana soured the Lebanon assault for Peres. If the bloodshed forced him to end Operation Grapes of Wrath without winning any concessions, conservatives would again accuse him of softness. “The one important thing is that the prime minister not crack,” said opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Peres’s rival in the election.
Peres was all but forced to strike at the guerrillas in southern Lebanon–and not for the first time. The area has been a thorn to Jerusalem since 1969, when Arab leaders forced Beirut to give Palestinians bases there–and World War II vintage Soviet rockets began hitting Israel’s northern settlements. Israel has mounted three major offensives and dozens of smaller raids on Lebanon in reply to the pinpricks, but the cost has only risen as Shiite radicals replaced Palestinian fighters following Israel’s disastrous 1982 siege of Beirut. Hizbullah fighters recruited from poor villages and Beirut slums introduced suicide bombings against Israeli troops in Israel’s self-declared “security zone” along the border–and vowed to fight until Israel vacated the last inch of Lebanese soil.
LOATH TO TAKE CASUALTIES ON THE ground, Israel has increasingly resorted to standoff weapons. In 1993, it emptied south Lebanon using long-range artillery barrages before Washington stepped in, brokering an unwritten agreement with Hizbullah that barred attacks on civilians. But that was no real solution. Lately, Hizbullah has turned up the heat. Some Israeli officials say Iran is meddling, hoping to help elect a hard-line Israeli government that would freeze the peace process; Hizbullah accuses Israel of violating the tacit accord. Whoever started it, Hizbullah rocket attacks escalated.
No Israeli civilians were killed by the Katyushas, but it was clearly time for Israel to renegotiate. The Grapes of Wrath assault was meant to jack the pressure up high enough, for long enough, to achieve a better deal with Hizbullah’s sponsors and protectors–preferably a written agreement formally barring Hizbullah from shooting rockets into Israel. The artillery barrages weren’t meant to drive out the guerrillas–that would require ground troops. Rather, the assault was designed to bring excruciating pressure to bear on Beirut, still rebuilding from 15 years of war. “We are trying to convince them there is a price tag,” explained an Israeli military spokesman. Israeli ships blockaded Lebanon’s ports, the source of most of its food. Jet fighters and attack helicopters repeatedly hit Lebanon’s coastal highway and alleged Hizbullah positions in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and Sidon. From Beirut’s seafront corniche, the helicopters were barely visible on the horizon. A faint crackle signaled one had fired a missile–then a building would crumble. The hits were, indeed, carefully calibrated. After a Hizbullah rocket severed a power line in the Galilee, shutting off the lights in the city of Qiryat Shemona, Israel destroyed two freshly renovated power plants serving Beirut. “It took us five years to get electricity all day long, and five minutes for Israel to plunge us back into darkness,” said an investment adviser in West Beirut.
Israel’s military planners anticipated a backlash driven by scenes of Lebanese suffering. Indeed, in the first days of the offensive, an Israeli rocket killed six civilians riding in an ambulance near Tyre; Israel said it had been used to transport fighters. Bombs reportedly killed 11 people, including several children, in a house in the village of Nabatiyeh al-Fawqa. Israel countered with a Desert Storm-style media policy–a flood of clinical images of modern weapons at work. Air force pilots compared their missions to videogames. Briefers showed film clips shot from laser-guided bombs as they flew down on alleged Hizbullah installations. “The lesson from the gulf war is that journalists, when fed properly, will produce film to compete with pictures of victims,” said Hebrew University professor Gadi Wolfsfeld. “The press conferences are copied directly from General Schwarzkopf,” conceded an Israeli Foreign Ministry official.
Time ran out when the shells landed on the U.N. base in Qana. “This is a disaster for the entire operation,” said Nachman Shai, a retired general who was Israel’s chief army spokesman during the gulf war. According to U.N. officials in Lebanon, Hizbullah fighters fired from a ravine that hid them from Fijian troops in the Qana base. Despite the fact that the U.N. base with its refugees were close by, the Israelis returned the fire. And Israel was loath to admit a mistake. “We are very sorry about the tragic loss of life,” said Col. Raanan Gissan, spokesman for the Grapes of Wrath operation. “But we were serious about them leaving the area.” The official U.S. line was that the Israelis had made “an error in fire control,” in the words of a White House aide traveling with Clinton.
Like an amateur fighter who takes on a pro, Hizbullah appeared to have won the round by staying in the ring. The fighting waned as diplomats converged in Damascus at the weekend in an effort to negotiate a temporary ceasefire. Instead of winning a long-term respite from attacks on its northern border, Israel may have to settle for a restatement of the 1993 rules barring attacks on civilians. Christopher said he wanted the accord “written down this time”–little gain for so much suffering.
