Israeli ministers name conflict with Hezbollah "Second Lebanon War"

Mar 21, 2007, 23:31 GMT

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.