Hezbollah Joins New Call for Cease-Fire

An Israeli soldier surveys an array of armored vehicles stationed at a quarry used as a gathering area in northern Israel. More than 100 Hezbollah missiles struck Israel on Friday. (By Baz Ratner -- Associated Press)

Egeland cited estimates that nearly a third of the fatalities were children. "There is something fundamentally wrong with a war where there are more dead children than armed men," he said. "It has to stop."

The International Committee of the Red Cross announced in Geneva that it was appealing for $81 million to help care for people displaced by the conflict, news agencies reported. Lebanese officials put that figure at half a million or more.

On Friday, the United States evacuated about 500 more U.S. citizens from Beirut aboard a chartered cruise ship, in what may be the last U.S.-organized mass departure for Americans, the Associated Press reported. About 15,000 U.S. citizens have left Lebanon.

Hezbollah's al-Manar television reported that the radical Shiite militia fired Khaibar-1 rockets for the first time in the conflict Friday. Nine rockets, presumably Khaibar-1's, reached the Israeli coastal city of Afula, about 30 miles south of the border. The weapon draws its name from the site of a 7th-century battle in which early followers of the prophet Muhammad conquered a Jewish enclave on the Arabian Peninsula. Police called the rockets the biggest so far to fall on Israel.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that a Katyusha rocket struck a hospital in Nahariya, damaging an upper story. The floor in Western Galilee Hospital was empty of patients, who had been moved to an underground shelter.

Since the conflict began July 12, 18 Israeli civilians have been killed by Hezbollah rockets and missiles. During the same period, 33 Israeli soldiers have died in exchanges with Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanese villages.

In diplomatic circles, discussions continued as to what form an international force for southern Lebanon might take. Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja said that European Union countries "will be providing the biggest share in any such force" and that France could end up taking command.

European critics have said that the U.S. opposition to an immediate cease-fire is meant to give Israel further time to grind Hezbollah down militarily.

On Thursday, Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon said that the Rome meeting's failure to call for an immediate cease-fire gave Israel a green light to carry on its offensive. That drew a rejoinder Friday from Rice's spokesman, J. Adam Ereli. "Any such statement is outrageous," Ereli said. "The United States is sparing no effort to bring a durable and lasting end to this conflict."

The unified Lebanese proposal represents an alternative approach and a diplomatic challenge for Rice, because it came from the Lebanese government, whose sovereignty she has repeatedly said she wants to buttress.

Hezbollah signed on to the joint proposal "in principle" on the understanding that more discussions will be held between it and other political factions after the U.N. Security Council decides on the composition and mandate of an international force on the border, according to Hezbollah and government officials. The radical Shiite Muslim movement would maintain its heavily armed militia in the south during the talks.

The plan, arrived at in prolonged negotiations Thursday, followed the broad outlines of what Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora presented to fellow leaders at the emergency meeting in Rome. It got nowhere then, chiefly because of Rice's opposition to the idea of a cease-fire as the first step.

Labor Minister Tarrad Hamadeh, a Hezbollah supporter, said that the cease-fire must come first but that once the shooting stopped, a prisoner exchange could take place "in two or three hours" through intermediaries. German intelligence officials, who have arranged previous exchanges, would again be welcome candidates for the job , he said.

Hezbollah has demanded that Israel release three long-jailed Lebanese prisoners in return for two Israeli soldiers that Hezbollah captured in the July 12 cross-border raid that touched off the fighting. Israel, backed by the United States, has demanded that the two Israelis be turned over unconditionally.

After a prisoner exchange, "we will discuss between us Lebanese how to proceed toward a reinforced international presence along the border," Hamadeh said. He acknowledged that disarming Hezbollah would have to be part of the discussion, saying: "We would discuss that as part of the system of national defense, but between us Lebanese."

The proposal also demands a Security Council commitment to place the disputed Shebaa Farms area under U.N. supervision until Syria, Israel and Lebanon can work out a settlement on whose territory it should be. Ghaleb Abu-Zeinab of Hezbollah's political bureau said this was key because the tiny pocket of orchards -- where the Israeli and Lebanese borders meet the occupied Golan Heights -- is the militia's only territorial dispute with Israel.

With that issue settled, he suggested, Hezbollah could consider some form of disarmament and cooperation with the Lebanese army and international peacekeepers. "If we got rid of the Shebaa Farms issue, for instance, then the liberation role of Hezbollah would end and we would be in a defense role," he said in an interview. "So we would be open to new discussions."

The idea of a U.N.- or European-led international force with a mandate and weaponry to make Hezbollah lay down its arms, as suggested by Israel and the United States, is "out of the question," Hamadeh said. "It would never be accepted," he added.

Abu-Zeinab said 17 days of fighting have shown that Israel cannot reach its aims by force of arms, and so the time has come "to discuss a way out of the impasse." Many Hezbollah supporters and other Lebanese share the view that the militia, by holding out as long as it has against Israel's well-equipped army, has enhanced its position in Lebanon and the Middle East.

Abu-Zeinab said the U.S.-Israeli demand that Hezbollah leave the southern border zone as part of any settlement is unrealistic. The group and its militia, he explained, are formed by the local population, which amounts to about 400,000 people between the Litani River and the Israeli border.

"The only way they can get Hezbollah out of the south is to empty the whole area of its population," he said.

Finer reported from Jerusalem. Anthony Shadid in Rmeish and Robin Wright in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.