CEASE-FIRE BEGINS AFTER A DAY OF FIERCE ATTACKS

By STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: August 14, 2006

JERUSALEM, Monday, Aug. 14 — A cease-fire negotiated by the United Nations went into effect at 8 a.m. local time (1 a.m. Eastern time) on Monday, the 34th day of this latest Middle East conflict, with Israeli troops ordered to halt their offensive against Hezbollah and Lebanon agreeing to halt Hezbollah attacks on Israel.

Hours before the cease-fire started, both sides carried out fierce attacks, with Israel launching air strikes in eastern Lebanon and near Sidon and shelling areas around Tyre and Khiam.

On Sunday, Israel bombed Beirut suburbs where Hezbollah is based and raced to consolidate its positions in southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah fired more than 220 rockets into northern Israel and tried to send a truck bomb into the Israeli city of Metulla, the Israelis said.

First reports on Monday morning were that the cease-fire was holding, but few expected a complete halt to hostilities, with skirmishes seen as likely between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops in Lebanon. Israel said it would maintain its air and sea blockade on Lebanon to prevent resupply of Hezbollah before an international force arrives to monitor the borders.

On Sunday, as its army fought for position, the Israeli cabinet endorsed a Security Council resolution calling for an end to the violence through the insertion of the Lebanese Army and an expanded United Nations force into southern Lebanon.

In Lebanon, as the clock struck 8, the streets of Beirut were littered with a new leaflet dropped by Israeli warplanes saying that Hezbollah had brought the people of Lebanon “to the edge of the abyss” and brought only “destruction, displacement and death.” The leaflet warned that the Israelis could return “with all necessary might.”

In Sidon, a United Nations aid convoy — denied permission from the Israelis to move for months — was preparing to head south. The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, has said that Hezbollah will continue to fight Israeli troops as long as they are on Lebanese soil. Israel is committed to stopping all offensive military actions, but has pledged to respond to attacks.

Israel has also said its troops will continue to destroy Hezbollah assets and stockpiles in the areas Israel controls until they are handed over to the Lebanese Army and United Nations troops.

On Sunday, at least 22 Lebanese died, news agencies reported, as Israel bombed targets in southern Beirut, where Hezbollah and its leadership are based.

Israeli planes hit gasoline stores in Tyre, killing at least 12 people, and fierce ground fighting continued as Israel hurried to secure its foothold along the Litani River, about 15 miles north of the border. The river is the northern edge of the zone that the Lebanese Army and the United Nations troops are supposed to keep free of Hezbollah militiamen and armaments.

At least one Israeli civilian was killed by a Hezbollah rocket and dozens of others were wounded. More than 220 rockets fell on Israel, the army said, one of the highest numbers in one day, bringing to more than 4,000 the total number of rockets to strike Israel since the war began on July 12. Five Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting on Sunday, the army said. It said 4 were severely wounded, and an additional 21 less seriously hurt.

No timetable was clear for when an expanded United Nations force, known as Unifil, would be ready to deploy, nor was there a deal on which country would lead it.

Israeli forces are expected to pull back gradually from Lebanon as the Lebanese Army and Unifil move together to take over sectors Israel now holds.

But a Lebanese cabinet meeting set for Sunday to discuss the enforcement of the United Nations Security Council resolution, including the disarmament of Hezbollah and the deployment of the Lebanese Army southward, was postponed indefinitely, apparently because of objections by Hezbollah, which has two cabinet ministers.

The dispute appeared to center on the critical issue of what would happen to Hezbollah’s weapons; few in Lebanon believe it would surrender them. The postponement seemed an indication of the tensions in Lebanon over the cease-fire arrangement, which will, if carried out, deprive Hezbollah of its freedom to operate in predominantly Shiite southern Lebanon.

Israel is tense, too. Mr. Olmert’s government is defending its handling of the war and the diplomacy to end it, arguing that Hezbollah has been badly damaged and that Israel has international backing to disarm it, at least in southern Lebanon.

The Israeli cabinet, after a lengthy session, voted 24 to 0 to approve the resolution, with one abstention — Shaul Mofaz, the transport minister, who was defense minister and army chief of staff when Ariel Sharon was prime minister.

Mr. Mofaz’s abstention was an implicit criticism of his successor, Amir Peretz, the Labor Party leader, and of Mr. Olmert, and may presage a cabinet reshuffle.

Some Labor ministers, like Ophir Pines-Paz, criticized the decision to launch an expanded military offensive before a cease-fire, while Mr. Olmert insisted, “Hezbollah won’t continue to exist as a state within a state.”

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In the news media, a political battle was also being fought.

“Ehud Olmert knows that this is a juncture at which an entirely different war is going to begin,” wrote Ben Caspit in Maariv, Israel’s second-largest newspaper. “The war over his political future and that of his government.”

Nahum Barnea, a columnist with the country’s largest paper, Yediot Aharonot, said, “We did not win.” Israel, he wrote, “comes to the cease-fire announcement bruised, conflicted and disturbed.”

Although the war had not quite ended, Mr. Barnea said, “the declaration of the cease-fire allows the war of the Jews to officially begin.” He called it a war of all against all — “the government against the general staff, Olmert against Peretz and vice versa, Olmert against Livni and vice versa, general against general, legislator against minister, the current government against its predecessors.’’ He referred to Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister.

The war began on July 12 when Hezbollah crossed the international border with rockets and troops and captured two Israeli soldiers, killing eight. Sheik Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, said he had acted in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza, where Israeli forces were fighting to secure the release of another soldier, who had been captured by Palestinian militants in another raid into Israel on June 25.

Mr. Olmert responded forcefully, and since July 12, nearly 1,150 Lebanese are estimated to have died, most of them civilians, and about 150 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Israel says 500 Hezbollah fighters have been killed, a figure Hezbollah disputes. In Gaza, nearly 200 Palestinians have died, many of them militants.

Shimon Peres, the experienced deputy prime minister, said that after a confusing start, “we came out of this with the upper hand, both politically and militarily.” He said that Sheik Nasrallah had suffered a serious setback in Lebanon. “Hezbollah is weaker, and the government of Lebanon is stronger,” he said, and “between our suffering and Nasrallah’s imagination, there is a big gap.”

The war “is neither a solution nor a respite — it’s an opening” toward a new relationship with Lebanon.

Ms. Livni, the foreign minister, said: “I am not naïve. I live in the Middle East, and I’m conscious of the difficulties that will be faced in applying the resolution. But this resolution is good for Israel.”

She said that since the war began“we understood that all our objectives could not be achieved — but this resolution answers a lot of the goals.”

Israel would negotiate for the release of its two captured soldiers, she said, presumably in exchange for captured Hezbollah fighters and the bodies of Hezbollah dead. Israel had demanded the unconditional release of its soldiers.

Still, Israelis will wait to see what the Lebanese Army and a new Unifil accomplish in southern Lebanon. Israeli officials, no fans of the French role in the diplomacy, were disturbed by suggestions that France, despite the language of the United Nations resolution, did not see the mission of Unifil as disarming Hezbollah.

Philippe Douste-Blazy, the French foreign minister, told Le Monde on Saturday that the purpose of the enlarged Unifil would not include the disarming of Hezbollah by force. “We never thought a purely military solution could resolve the problem of Hezbollah,” he said. “We are agreed on the goal, the disarmament, but for us the means are purely political.”

That is the kind of immediate backtracking from the resolution that worries the Israelis, and which they say justifies their continuing military offensive to push Hezbollah back beyond the Litani, because they do not believe that the Lebanese Army, even with Unifil, will do it.

A Foreign Ministry official pointed out that it was Mr. Douste-Blazy who, in Beirut, called Iran “a force for stability in the region” when Europe is trying, with the United States, to ensure that Iran does not develop nuclear weapons.

In the fighting Sunday, Israel said it shot down two Hezbollah drones, one near Tyre and the other over Israel; the Israeli news media said they were loaded with explosives.

In Beirut, the capital, about 20 explosions rocked the southern edge of the city in two minutes at midafternoon. The blasts were so heavy they could be heard from the mountain resorts high above the city. Another barrage occurred at night that appeared to be one of the heaviest attacks on the outskirts of Beirut since the war began.

In southeastern Lebanon, near the Israeli panhandle, the thump and boom of artillery pounded a constant beat that echoed in the mountain valleys Sunday night.