THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

And the NY Times reports on what is known of the agreement.

France and the United States reached agreement Saturday on a Security Council resolution to halt the fighting in Lebanon and lay out plans for a permanent cease-fire and a long-term political settlement, a French official said Saturday.

Heavy fighting continued in Lebanon, with Israeli warplanes striking dozens of targets into the early morning hours on Saturday, and an Israeli commando raid in Tyre turning into a fierce gun battle. And Hezbollah unleashed a flurry of rockets late in the day, firing 140 of them into Israel in one 90-minute stretch.

Under the terms of the diplomatic agreement, a Security Council resolution will call for an immediate cessation of attacks by Hezbollah and of “offensive military operations” by Israel, according to a French diplomatic official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the agreement had not yet been made public. The official said that the text of the resolution would be released later on Saturday and that the Security Council had scheduled a meeting on Saturday afternoon to consider the matter.

A vote cannot occur in the Security Council until 24 hours after the formal introduction of a resolution. And it is far from clear whether Israel or Hezbollah would abide by the terms.

The French official said that the text called for a buffer zone to be set up free of all but the Lebanese Army and United Nations-mandated forces in southern Lebanon.

So Hezbollah has to stop all attacks while Israel has to stop “offensive military operations”. So Israel merely labels their bombing raid and troop incursions "defensive" and they are still OK. That should work. In the meantime, the fighting continues.

The Israeli bombardment on Saturday was particularly heavy in the southern port city of Tyre, where journalists could hear jet fighters, helicopters, the boom of bombs and the rattle of heavy machine-gun fire in the darkness. Helicopter gunships raked the streets leading into the city....

...Hezbollah unleashed an extensive rocket barrage on northern Israel on Saturday afternoon, killing a woman and her daughters in the Arab village of Arab al-Aramshe, according to the Israeli police and news reports.

Until 4 p.m., Hezbollah had launched just 30 rockets, many fewer than usual. But the group then shot off 140 rockets during a 90-minute period that accounted for the three deaths and most of the 54 people who were wounded, according to the Israeli police....

....At the Bass refugee camp on the edge of Tyre, an Israeli drone fired a missile at two men on a motorbike, killing them. Israeli aircraft continued to hit targets on the southern fringe of Lebanon, where Hezbollah maintains a strong presence.

In Zahle, a predominantly Greek Catholic city on the western edge of the Bekaa Valley, an Israeli missile hit a fuel truck carrying diesel, exploding it in a ball of flames. The driver was hospitalized in critical condition.

There were signs the fighting could expand: Israeli planes dropped leaflets over the city of Sidon, south of here, warning people to evacuate before expected airstrikes on “terrorist infrastructure”

Sidon is an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim city, rather distant from Hezbollah strongholds further south. In recent weeks it has been a collection point for many of the hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting.

But there was one bit of comic relief in all the tragedy.

The Israeli Army also issued a statement saying it did “not consider the Lebanese people to be its enemy and does not want to harm them.”

Whereupon everybody breathed a sigh of relief.