Jerusalem - An Israeli ministerial panel decided Wednesday
to officially name last year's 33 days of combat with the Lebanese
Hezbollah movement 'the Second Lebanon War,' its chairman announced.
The official name was given several days after the Israeli
government, bowing to popular sentiment, redefined the month-long
conflict and formally termed it a war.
Second Lebanon War has been picked up by the Israeli public as the
common name for the conflict, said Minister Without Portfolio Yaakov
Edri, who chairs the Ministerial Committee on Symbols and Ceremonies.
'There's no discussion about it, and we decided on it
unanimously,' he told Channel 10 television.
By doing so, the committee also heeded a request by family members
of soldiers who died in the war, he said.
Government officials had previously refrained from calling the
offensive against Hezbollah and the group's strikes against Israel a
war, because the fighting did not take place between two sovereign
states but rather between a state and the Shiite Muslim guerilla
movement.
Instead, official Israeli documents used 'campaign' or 'fighting,'
even though Israeli media and the public spoke almost from the outset
of a war.
While some dictionaries strictly define war as an armed conflict
between states or nations, broader understandings include combat
between armed groups in the definition.
Israeli officials were also initially hesitant to adopt the
popular name Second Lebanon War because the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war
is known in Israel as Operation Peace of the Galilee, not as the
First Lebanon War.
The name is due to be brought before Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert's cabinet for final approval Sunday.
More than 1,200 Lebanese and 159 Israelis died in the war, which
erupted after Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers in a July 12
cross-border raid.
Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes on southern Lebanon and
Beirut during the offensive, while Hezbollah fired more than 3,000
Katyusha missiles at northern Israel.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
Your Talkback on this Story