Israeli general resigns over Lebanon raid

JERUSALEM—The Israeli general in charge of forces in the northern Galilee region has resigned over the July cross-border raid by Hezbollah that sparked the Jewish state’s 34-day war on the Shiite militia, an army spokeswoman has said.
General Gal Hirsch has tendered his resignation to the chief of staff, which has not yet accepted it, the spokeswoman told newsmen. Hirsch’s resignation was recommended by an internal army inquiry that examined the circumstances that led to the July 12 cross-border raid by Hezbollah, in which two soldiers were captured and three killed.
Another five Israeli soldiers were killed in a subsequent raid into Lebanese territory aimed at freeing the captured troops. The Hezbollah raid led Israel to launch its war on the Shiite movement, which ended under a United Nations-brokered truce on August 14. On Saturday, the United States vetoed an Arab-sponsored draft resolution in the UN Security Council that would have condemned Israel’s deadly attack in the Gaza Strip, calling the text “unbalanced” and “biased.”
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States was “compelled to vote against” the draft resolution because “we do not believe (it) was designed to contribute to the cause of peace.”
“The resolution would have used the tragic incident in Beit Hanoun to advance a one-sided political agenda,” she said, referring to what Israel called an accidental shelling on November 8 that killed 19 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, in the the Gaza town of Beit Hanun. “The resolution included inflammatory and unnecessary language that would aggravate the situation in Gaza ... (and) failed to include any reference to terrorism or to condemn Hamas for its threats to broaden the attacks against Israel and the United States,” Rice added. As one of the council’s five permanent members along with Britain, China, France and Russia, the United States has veto power which it has now used 82 times, often to shield Israel from censure.
Its previous use of the veto was in July to block a Qatari-sponsored draft resolution that would have condemned Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza as “disproportionate force” and would have demanded a halt to Israeli operations in the territory. Ten of the council’s 15 members voted in favor the amended text, introduced by Qatar on behalf of Arab member states, and four — Britain, Denmark, Japan and Slovakia — abstained. Israel immediately hailed the US veto as “very satisfactory” while the Palestinians said it would encourage further Israeli attacks on civilians.—Agencies