Rage, Rockets & Rhetoric

Israel Vows To Keep Fighting; Hezbollah Blasts Rice, Promises 'New' Mideast

(CBS/AP)  Israel is determined to keep fighting Lebanon-based Hezbollah and will take "severe measures" against the militant group's guerrillas, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday, signaling there will be no letup in Israel's two-week military offensive.

Hezbollah responded a few hours later - with more than a dozen rockets hitting the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Israeli media reports several people were injured. Witnesses say two rockets hit near Rambam Hospital.

Olmert spoke at the start of a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who called for a cease fire, but not at any price. "We need to ensure that we will not return to the previous situation," Rice said.

Also Tuesday, a senior Israeli army commander made the military's first comment on the likely scope of the ground war in Lebanon. "The intention is to deal with the Hezbollah infrastructure that is within reach," said Livni, in an Israel Army Radio recap of the campaign to wipe out guerrilla outposts and rocket-launching sites. "That means in southern Lebanon, not going beyond that."

Rice began her Mideast trip in Lebanon Monday, where she laid out the U.S. position during an unannounced visit to Beirut. Rice met first with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh, and then hosted a dinner at the U.S. embassay for a group of anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians who call themselves the March 14 Forces.

Rice is arguing for a cease fire simultaneous with the deployment of international and Lebanese troops into southern Lebanon, to prevent new Hezbollah attacks on Israel.

CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports Lebanese officials describe Monday's meetings as tense, with Rice repeating the same conditions for a cease fire that Israel has laid out.

Parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a prominent Shiite Muslim who has been negotiating on behalf of Hezbollah, rejected the idea and said a cease fire should be immediate, leaving the other issues for much later. Western-backed Prime Minister Fuad Saniora took a similar stance and complained to Rice about the destruction wreaked by U.S. ally Israel.

Israel, the Lebanese leader told Rice, "is taking Lebanon backward 50 years and the result will be Lebanon's destruction."

In other recent developments:

Hospital and security officials say seven people were killed and another person was wounded in an Israeli missile strike early Tuesday on a house in Nabatiyeh, in south Lebanon.

Israeli troops Monday seized a hilltop in a Hezbollah stronghold, capturing two guerrillas in heavy fighting.

The U.S. has evacuated 12,000 Americans. A group of 300 Americans and 100 other Europeans are believed to be trapped in villages south of Tyre, according to Erik Rattat, a German official involved in the evacuation of foreigners from Lebanon. Some 11,700 Americans have fled Lebanon.

President Bush has ordered helicopters and ships to Lebanon to provide humanitarian aid. Announcing the assistance program, White House press secretary Tony Snow said there's no reason to believe an immediate cease fire would stop violence in the Mideast and said the world should confront the destabilizing force of Hezbollah and its practice of using the Lebanese people as "human shields."

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he wants a meeting Wednesday in Rome to negotiate a deal including a cease fire, deployment of an international force and the release of two Israeli soldiers abducted by Hezbollah. Annan's goal is "to keep the U.N. involved in the mediation efforts, even if the international military force is likely to be a NATO or other non-U.N. force," said CBS News foreign affairs analyst Pamela Falk. "Relief aid and humanitarian assistance will most likely have to be distributed by U.N. agencies."

Hezbollah's representative in Iran warned Monday that his militant group plans to widen its attacks on Israel. "We are going to make Israel not safe for Israelis. There will be no place they are safe," Hossein Safiadeen told a conference that included the Tehran-based representative of the Palestinian group Hamas and the ambassadors from Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority. "You will see a new Middle East - in the way of Hezbollah and Islam, not in the way of Rice and Israel."

Israel shelled a town in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, killing five Palestinians and wounding at least nine people, according to hospital officials. Israel said its attacks were aimed at two groups of Hamas militants firing rockets at southern Israel and that it regretted any civilian casualties.

An Israeli helicopter crashed in northern Israel near the Lebanese border after hitting an electrical wire while making an emergency landing, causing two casualties and starting a large brushfire atop a hill.

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©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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