LONDON, July 19 (UPI) -- Britain will not call for a cease-fire in the Middle East until Lebanese Hezbollah has returned its two hostage Israeli soldiers and halted rocket attacks on northern Israel, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday.
His remarks appeared to frustrate hopes that the United Nations Security Council might call for an all-party cease-fire at Thursday's meeting to discuss the escalating crisis, in which at least 270 Lebanese and 25 Israelis have so far been killed.
"This would stop now if the soldiers that were kidnapped, wrongly, when Hezbollah crossed the U.N. blue line were released; it would stop if the rockets stopped coming into Haifa deliberately to kill innocent civilians," he told Parliament.
"If those two things happen, I will be the first out there saying Israel should halt its operations."
Blair acknowledged that Israel's offensive against Lebanon was having "tragic and terrible" consequences for the Lebanese people, but insisted Hezbollah was to blame.
"If it is to stop, it is to stop by undoing what started it, and it started with the kidnap of the Israeli soldiers and the bombardment of Northern Israel," he added.
But he was accused by Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Menzies Campbell of failing to be evenhanded in his response to the conflict.
Campbell suggested that Blair was resisting calling for a cease-fire because the United States had granted Israel one more week to attack Lebanon without interference.
Media reports have indicated that Washington has given Israel a window of opportunity in which to inflict maximum damage on Hezbollah before international pressure for a cease-fire becomes compelling.
"It's clear the Americans have given the Israelis the green light. (The Israeli attacks) will be allowed to go on longer, perhaps for another week," a senior European official told the Guardian newspaper Tuesday. Diplomatic sources were quoted as saying there was a clear time limit, partly dictated by fears that an extended conflict could spiral into a broader regional crisis.
A primary objective of such a strategy would be to deliver a blow to Syria and Iran, both accused by Britain and the United States of sponsoring the Hamas and Hezbollah attacks.
The crisis was sparked when Hamas militants kidnapped Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit three weeks ago, prompting Israel to launch a military offensive against the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah guerrillas then carried out a cross-border raid last Wednesday, kidnapping a further two Israeli soldiers and launching rockets and mortar bombs at towns in northern Israel and outposts in the disputed Shabaa Farms area.
Israel described the attack as an "act of war" by Lebanon, and commenced a large-scale military campaign, launching air strikes against Beirut and southern Lebanon and sending troops over the border for the first time since the military withdrawal in 2000.
Speaking to Parliament Tuesday, Blair laid the blame for the conflict firmly at the door of Hamas and Hezbollah militants, who he said were sponsored by Damascus and Tehran.
Their actions were part of a deliberate strategy "designed to provoke the response the response that followed," he said.
He urged Israel to show restraint, but insisted its response was "understandable."
"We should be in no doubt about the immediate cause of this situation," Blair said. Hamas and Hezbollah and "those that support them" had planned the abductions as "a deliberate strategy in order to make sure this conflict is widened."
Blair called for an international force to stop the Hezbollah offensive and prevent its recurrence. The ultimate objective had to be the dismantling of militia groups in southern Lebanon in line with U.N. Resolution 1559, he added.
But Blair also eyed a solution that would end the alleged interference in the region by Tehran and Damascus. The crisis could not be resolved without addressing its root causes, he said, which were "directly connected in an arc from Iran right across the Middle East."
This appeared to be a reference to what is known as the Shiite crescent, a geographical linkage of Shiite Muslim communities across the Middle East, from Iran to the Palestinian Territories, via Iraq and Syria. The crescent also represents a political alliance of Iran's Shiite regime, some Shiite factions in Iraq, Syria -- which is ruled by the Alawites, a Shiite splinter group -- Hezbollah and the Damascus branch of the Hamas movement.
Blair flatly rejected suggestions that the root of the conflict was Israel's failure to withdraw from territories occupied in the 1967 war as required by U.N. Resolution 242.
In a remarkable indication of the direction of British foreign policy in the Middle East, Blair said it was in fact the Palestinians who had defaulted on the resolution by rejecting the peace deal offered at Camp David.
It was a statement that prompted outrage from some parliamentarians, who noted that Israel had begun to build illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories long before the Camp David proposal, which in any case did not include a return to 1967 borders.
Many parliamentarians, both from opposition parties and within Labor itself, are unsettled by the government's approach to the crisis, which is to be debated during an emergency session Thursday.
The Liberal Democrats say that Israel does not have the right to take action that is disproportionate and amounts to "collective punishment in Lebanon and Gaza."
Scottish National Party Leader Alex Salmond accused Blair Wednesday of abandoning Britain's role as an "honest broker" in the conflict and turning it into a "client state" of the U.S. administration.
Blair's position certainly mirrors that of U.S. President George W. Bush, who Tuesday accused Syria of trying to use the crisis in the Middle East to reassert its influence in Lebanon.
"Syria is trying to get back into Lebanon, it looks like to me," he said in Washington. "The root cause of the problem is Hezbollah and that problem needs to be addressed," he added.
