Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 1, 1993 TAG: 9308010113
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: JERUSALEM LENGTH: Medium
After their most intense air, naval and artillery bombardment in a decade, Israeli forces stopped firing at 6 p.m. Jerusalem time in line with an agreement that fundamentalist Muslim guerrillas belonging to Hezbollah, the Party of God, would stop firing rockets at northern Israel.
A government statement issued after a rare Cabinet meeting on the Jewish Sabbath said: "In light of the understandings and the achievement of the goals of the military operation, the Cabinet committee on security directed the chief of staff to order defense forces to stop military actions in Lebanon."
"All [Israel Defense Forces] guns are silent on the U.N. zone," a United Nations officer reported from the southern Lebanese port of Tyre. "It has gone completely quiet since the Israeli cease-fire announcement." The U.N. area is just north of Israel's self-proclaimed 9-mile-deep "security zone."
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, announcing the cease-fire, declared "Operation Accountability" had restored the security of his country's northern communities, which the guerrillas had repeatedly rocketed, and laid the basis for renewed progress in Israel's overall peace negotiations with its Arab neighbors.
In Beirut, Hezbollah said it would continue fighting Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon but would end its cross-border rocket attacks on the Jewish state as long as Israeli forces refrained from hitting civilian targets in Lebanon.
Rabin warned that Israel would respond harshly to any breach of the understanding reached with Lebanon and Syria, and its forces remained on alert.
"We are not talking about guarantees [from Lebanon or Syria] - we know the realities of Lebanon," Rabin told a news conference at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. "The principal guarantee is the strength of the Israel Defense Forces, which used only part of their power."
Lebanese authorities say the Israeli offensive drove an estimated 500,000 villagers from their homes in southern Lebanon and killed about 130 people, mostly civilians. Three Israelis, two civilians and a soldier also were killed, and 100,000 have remained in bomb shelters through the week in northern Israel.
In a week of fighting, Israeli artillery fired more than 30,000 shells, according to U.N. military observers, and its planes and helicopters flew more than 1,200 combat missions.
The cease-fire agreement, as outlined by Rabin, requires the Lebanese government of President Elias Hrawi, with Syrian support, to ensure that there will be no further rocket attacks on northern Israel. And it makes clear that Israel and the local militia it backs, the South Lebanon Army, will continue to defend its "security zone."
by CNB