Israel's Lebanon goals widen into open-ended war

JERUSALEM, July 15 (Reuters) What started for Israel as a bid to rescue two soldiers captured in a cross-border raid has rapidly widened into a war on the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah and the prospect of an open-ended military engagement.

After the soldiers were seized by Hizbollah militants on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged that everything would be done to recover them as quickly as possible.

But as with the seizure of another Israeli soldier by Hamas militants in a raid from Gaza late last month, it soon became clear that recovering the troops from Lebanon would not be straightforward, and the objectives widened.

The Israeli army chief spoke of a ''wide-scale, intensive operation'' against Hizbollah, which he called a ''cancer'' within Lebanon whose guerrillas must be removed from the border area.

In Gaza, the goal expanded from recovering the soldier, 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit, to stopping Hamas militants firing rockets into Israel and destroying the institutions of the Hamas-led government which was elected in January.

A similar and much more rapid progression has taken place with respect to Lebanon and Hizbollah in the past three days, during which Hizbollah has fired more than 350 rockets into Israel, killing four civilians and wounding around 150.

Israel's army chief, General Dan Halutz, yesterday said the goals of the Lebanon campaign, in which 67 Lebanese, mostly civilians, have already been killed, were now widespread and included ridding Israel's northern neighbour of its ''cancer''.

''A wide-scale, intensive operation during which we hurt the Hizbollah organisation,'' was how Halutz described the assault.

''There are many more targets. Our goal is to hurt Hizbollah and wait for the Lebanese government to take responsibility, which means the removal of Hizbollah from the border area and its replacement with another force, a force that represents Lebanese sovereignty,'' he said.

The operation would include sending ''a message to Beirut and Lebanon that they swallowed a cancer that has to be regurgitated, and if not this country will pay a price as in the past,'' he said, referring to Israel's 1982 invasion to stop Palestinian guerrillas attacking from Lebanese soil.

DRAWNOUT CAMPAIGN Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was equally explicit in remarks on Thursday, when the soldiers were barely mentioned.

''The goal is to remove Hizbollah from south Lebanon.

''The first part of the operation is to lessen their capabilities. We cannot allow ourselves to let them remain there. We cannot allow that a leader like Nasrallah ... dictate acts in the area,'' she said, referring to Hizbollah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

The widening of the goals raises the prospect of a military campaign lasting months or more that also threatens to inflict extensive damage on Lebanon's economy and infrastructure, only recently rebuilt following the 1975-1990 civil war.

It was only six years ago, in early 2000, that Israel finally withdrew the last of its forces from a ''security zone'' in southern Lebanon, officially ending the occupation that began with the 1982 invasion.

The current, broadening campaign also suggests it could be months or even years before the captured soldiers are recovered.

Hizbollah has said it is willing to exchange the soldiers for the release of prisoners being held in Israel, echoing a demand made by the Palestinian militants holding Shalit, but Israel has rejected any exchange out of hand.

Exchanges have happened in the past.

Only two years ago Israel released more than 400 prisoners in exchange for Hizbollah freeing Elhanan Tanenbaum, a retired colonel captured in 2000, and returning the bodies of three soldiers killed in Israel-Lebanon border clashes.

REUTERS AK VV1615