Hizbollah ignites broad conflict with Israel

Hizbollah may have been seeking a morale-boosting prisoner swap with Israel, but its seizure of two Israeli soldiers has sparked a far wider confrontation for which Lebanese and Israeli civilians are paying the price.

The United States, already at odds with Syria and Iran, has put the blame for violence in Lebanon and Gaza on Hizbollah and Hamas, both Islamist groups backed by Damascus and Tehran.

By striking into Israel, capturing two soldiers and killing eight, the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim guerillas tore up unwritten rules that had prevented major border flare-ups since Israeli troops quit south Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation.

Israel has responded with an onslaught on Hizbollah targets and Lebanese civilian installations that has killed at least 179 people, but failed to prevent Hizbollah rocket salvos striking deeper into Israel than ever before and killing 12 Israelis.

Hizbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah declared at the outset that the way to resolve the conflict was to exchange the two soldiers for Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners in Israel, saying this was among the group's longstanding objectives.

But analysts said the rules had changed since Hizbollah pulled off just such a swap in 2004, when Israel freed over 400 prisoners for an abducted businessman and three dead soldiers.

"I think Hizbollah miscalculated," said Nizar Hamzeh, a Lebanese expert on the group at the American University of Kuwait. "Israel reacted differently this time."

Nevertheless, both sides appeared to have been well-prepared for the whirlwind of hostilities unleashed six days ago.

Hizbollah has shown new military capacities, with unrelenting rocket strikes on Haifa and beyond, and a missile hit on an Israeli naval ship that killed four sailors.

Israel has devastated Lebanon's infrastructure and Hizbollah buildings, but failed to halt the rocket fire, kill Nasrallah or force Hizbollah's television and radio off the air.

"Clearly Israel had a plan and is implementing it after Hizbollah gave it a pretext," said Farid al-Khazen, a Lebanese Christian parliamentarian and political science professor.

"The implications go far beyond Lebanon," he said, adding that many would link Hizbollah's actions to Syria and Iran even if the Lebanese group was acting on its own initiative. Israel has portrayed its campaign in Lebanon as a struggle against an "axis of terror" involving Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hizbollah that threatens the whole world - echoing language used by the United States since the September 11 attacks.

For many in the Muslim world, angered by the plight of the Palestinians and by the Iraq war, the threat is seen more as US-Israeli hegemony and military adventurism.

"There is a cumulative response, political and emotional, to the US-Israeli assault on the region," said Rami Khouri, a commentator for Beirut's English-language Daily Star newspaper.

"Groups like Hizbollah and Hamas are getting more radical and more militarily sophisticated. There is discontent among Arab populations against their (pro-Western) governments. Syria and Iran are exploiting this," Mr Khouri said.

This is small comfort to Lebanon, whose people are watching in fury as Israel systematically pounds their country, saying it is cleansing its neighbour of a "foreign body".

Nasrallah, Hizbollah's chief, has ridiculed suggestions that his fighters are anything but authentically Lebanese, or that they can be disarmed or removed from the south as Palestinian guerillas were expelled by Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon.

But many Lebanese are angry with Hizbollah for provoking a war, just when they were praying for prosperity and groping for a new national consensus after decades of Syrian tutelage.