ISRAEL's onslaught on Lebanon appeared likely to continue last night after the United States proposals to bring about an end to be bloodshed turned out to be little more than a copy of previous Israeli demands to disarm the Hizbullah guerrillas in southern Lebanon and leave Israel's occupation army in place for months to come.
But, with public opinion both inside and outside Israel weakening, the authorities tried yesterday to counter the image of 400,000 refugees created by its blitz on south Lebanon.
It brought 25 children from its Lebanon occupation zone to holiday in Israel, showing to the foreign media the schoolboys, aged 10 to 14, marching in a neat file into Israel bearing one Lebanese and one Israeli flag.
The exercise showed Israeli concern at the image both at home and abroad at its operation to try to crush Hizbullah guerrillas in Lebanon.
Cracks have appeared at the periphery of the wide Israeli public support for the campaign to knock out the pro Iranian guerrillas whose rocketing of northern Israel spurred the onslaught.
On Tuesday, a leader of Israel's mainstream Peace Now group, which is close to Prime Minister Shimon Peres's Labour party, questioned the operation in the light of an Israeli helicopter killing two women and four children near Tyre. Israel had ordered civilians to flee.
Graphic footage of the dead was played on international cable networks. Israel's state run Channel One was selective in broadcasting the footage to save public sensitivities, the news editor, Mr Rafik Halabi, said.
Israeli jets continued Operation Grapes of Wrath yesterday, with 55 raids on south Lebanon villages.
The planes are dropping heavy bombs today, unlike yesterday when they used rockets mainly and smaller bombs," said an observer in the southern city of Tyre.
Hizbullah also kept up the pressure from its side yesterday, firing repeated volleys of Katyusha rocket rounds which slightly wounded two people and caused minor damage.
While casualties from the mobile but inaccurate missiles remained minimal Hizbullah showed its ability to maintain the rhythm of attacks despite the week long Israeli air and artillery blitz against its bases and launch positions across south Lebanon.
UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon said they had recorded almost 600 Hizbullah rocket attacks since the Israeli onslaught began, including at least 60 yesterday.
Hizbullah said one of the latest volleys hit the town of Safed, 15 kilometres (nine miles) inside the Israeli border, with more sophisticated rockets fired from inside an Israeli occupied border zone in south Lebanon. But there was no confirmation of the report from Israel, where military censors do not allow exact locations of strikes to be disclosed.
Hizbullah rejected a proposal involving US mediation yesterday.