copied here (with some others) in case the newspaper is attacked and its website goes down - can be read in the original here

Editorial

Israel, with the blind support of the United States, has insisted that a cease-fire must be delayed until its military can inflict meaningful damage upon Hizbullah. The Israelis believe that by bombing Lebanon back 20 years, Hizbullah will be weakened. But so far, Israel's unimaginative military campaign has had the opposite effect. Support for Hizbullah - which was limited before the war - has reached record highs in Lebanon and around the region, with each atrocity only adding to the ranks of angry people who would like to see Israelis suffer retribution. And as Hizbullah gains strength, the Lebanese state - an entity that will be necessary for any political process that would restore calm along the border - is being systematically weakened.

The only way to reverse this trend is to take a step back from war-mongering and then a step toward negotiations. Hizbullah has already agreed to a five-point package that can be quickly implemented once a cease-fire is in place: the exchange of prisoners, and end to Israel's occupation of the Shebaa Farms, maps of Israeli-laid mindefields in South Lebanon, an end to Israeli air, land and sea incursions into Lebanese territory, and the deployment of the Lebanese Army in South Lebanon. If Israel is actually serious about not returning to the previous status quo - or to an even worse future - these five points provide an excellent formula for reaching that objective.

The Lebanese people will be weighing Washington's words and actions very carefully in the coming days to see whether the "urgent" effort to secure a cease-fire promised by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will actually materialize. If this promise was merely a ruse to prolong the destruction of Lebanon, then the Lebanese had better prepare themselves for a different vision of their future. The "new Lebanon" could end up looking more like an Islamized Somalia than the free and democratic country that was recently held up as a shining example by the Bush administration. If that should be the fate of Lebanon, then the Israelis ought to also prepare themselves for a different future: one of perpetual violence and instability along their border.

and another article from the same paper - explaining the significane of the peace plan

Friday, July 28, 2006
Uncertainty as Hezbollah backs Lebanon PM truce plan
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

by Salim Yassine
BEIRUT, July 28, 2006 (AFP) - Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora secured a political victory by convincing Hezbollah government members to back his plan for a ceasefire with Israel but it remained unclear Friday whether the move went beyond symbolic value.

Hezbollah said that it had taken its stance to "reinforce national unity" while Sinora's allies hailed the decision as an important step in improving the credibility of the Lebanese government on the world stage.

The announcement late Thursday that the government had backed Siniora's seven-point plan for a ceasefire came as ferocious battles continued in the south between Israeli forces and Hezbollah on the 17th day of Israel's offensive.

A Western diplomatic source told AFP that "diplomatic efforts are intensifying to create conditions that are right for a ceasefire," acknowledging that "Hezbollah is starting to show flexibility" Hezbollah had previous qualified Siniora's speech in Rome as merely personal ideas, so support for the plan from the cabinet, which includes two Hezbollah ministers, caught many commentators by surprise.

"The decision of the council of ministers is a surprise and one of the most important decisions taken for years," said the daily An-Nahar. "The government succeeded to address the international community with a single voice." In a speech to an international meeting on the Lebanon crisis in Rome earlier this week, Siniora laid out a plan for a ceasefire that demanded an exchange of prisoners between Lebanon and Israel and a pacification of their common border.

But even more crucially, the plan foresaw the Lebanese government exercising full sovereignty over its southern regions and the UN Security Council making an engagement to put the contested Shebaa farms area under United Nations jurisdiction.

Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said the cabinet also unanimously considered that Wednesday's 15-nation conference in Rome had "achieved a breakthrough" by raising the issue of the Shebaa Farms.

Hezbollah has vowed to continue fighting Israel in order to free the Shebaa Farms which the Jewish state had seized from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, but is now claimed by Lebanon with the approval of Damascus.

"This is a positive development because it reinforces the credibility of the Siniora government towards the international community," said MP Boutros Harb, who belongs to Siniora's anti-Syrian parliamentary majority.

"The decisions of the government have been taken after a profound dialogue and we hope that Hezbollah will respect them," he added.

But Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said that the Shiite militant group, which has long controlled much of southern Lebanon and refuses to give up its arms, was ready to consider all suggestions but only after a ceasefire was agreed.

Hezbollah "is ready to study the question of the deployment of an international force on the condition that it respects Lebanese sovereignty. Thus all of us together are taking the same position within the government," said "For the moment neither the composition of this force, its mission or the framework of its deployment are clear. Let's wait for what the international community will propose to us." "Nobody in Lebanon is opposed to Lebanese sovereignty being extended over all its territory." According to An-Nahar, Siniora told Hezbollah that Lebanon has to "keep two irons in the fire, that of military resistance to (Israeli) aggression but also put forward plans as the forthcoming diplomatic battle will be hard." "If we do nothing and play the waiting game we risk the UN Security Council imposing conditions that are not in out favour," he said, according to the paper.-AFP

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