Even as it buries dead, Israel's resolve is strong

ACRE - Marina Flecher was weeping as she described her neighbour Alex Shwarzman, one of at least nine soldiers killed in the hellish battle of Bint Jbeil yesterday, as "a good boy, a sweet boy" who was always asking her if she needed anything after her heart operation.

But Mrs Flecher, 47, one of whose two sons is himself serving in the Israel Defence Forces, was adamant that the war should continue.

"We have to kill Hizbollah," she said, "but it's so sad for the boys."

Mrs Flecher lives two floors below the Shwarzman apartment in a shabby block in the poor Bura district of this ancient port city.

Current estimates are that 60 per cent of Acre's population have left for refuge out of range of the Katyushas. Anything up to 500,000 people have fled the north as a whole.

Mrs Flecher's son, who declined to give his name because of his naval service, explained bluntly the reason his parents were still there - they couldn't afford to leave.

It goes without saying that casualties from the Katyushas, which have still killed only 19 civilians in the 16 days of this "asymmetrical" war, are trifling compared with more than 400 deaths of civilians in the relentless bombardment of Lebanon.

The few motorists speeding through the streets of an eerily deserted Haifa, jamming on their brakes and running anxiously to take shelter under a bridge when the sirens sound, is hardly normal life; but the death and devastation wrought in much of Lebanon is something quite different.

But real fear of the rockets, and anger at how they have shut down an entire region of Israel, helps to explain why families like the Flechers remain, for now, so strong in their support of the war against Hizbollah, despite the news of the serious military reverse which they had been watching on the Russian-language television channel.

For Mrs Flecher it must go on "because then there will be quiet and we won't have to cry any more".

She is in good company.

A Ma'ariv poll published yesterday showed 82 per cent wanted the military to continue the fighting to remove Hizbollah from the border and only then begin ceasefire negotiations.

Earlier polls, moreover, have shown that the strength of feeling is even higher in the north than the rest of the country.

Mrs Flecher's husband, Vladimir, 53, is just as adamant, insisting Israel must act against Hizbollah in the same way he sees the US as having done against the perpetrators of 9/11, and Russia against its Chechen rebels.

Mr Flecher's view is that the error of Bint Jbeil was in using 20 and 21-year-olds in the combat.

"Older and more professional soldiers should be the ones to fight that war," he said.

The Israeli press and mainstream politicians yesterday were largely in tune with the Flechers' reaction to Bint Jbeil.

The headline of a Ma'ariv editorial argued for "more determination and less sensitivity" in pursuit of the war.

And the Justice Minister Haim Ramon said that the Army should raze villages in southern Lebanon before sending more troops, in order to avoid casualties.

For now at least, and whatever the difference over tactics, the Flechers remain in a large majority in wanting the war to be pursued.

Losses of soldiers by a public well used to war are one thing; but losses without tangible results in increased security, not least in the prevention of Hizbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel, might be another.

On Channel Ten's early evening news bulletin yesterday, the network's well connected military correspondent Alon Ben David, suggested that he had talked to some officers who seemed to be looking for a "ladder to climb down" - by looking more actively to a political agreement to disarm Hizbollah.

But the big news of the war was the Cabinet decision to call up three divisions of reservists to the northern front, the biggest call-up of its kind since Operation Defensive Shield four years ago.

At the same time, the Cabinet made it clear it was not yet authorising a full scale land invasion.

Which means that it could be no more than postponing, for perhaps a week, a difficult decision between pursuing the diplomatic route, or mounting just such an invasion.

- INDEPENDENT