Israel Army Vents Its Frustration in S. Lebanon : Retaliation: After rocket attacks near its northern border, the Jewish state stages its largest military action in more than two years.

MARJAYOUN, Lebanon —  In case anyone thinks Israel is giving up on retaliation because it refrained from hitting back after its cities were struck by Iraqi missiles, the Israeli army is sending a sharply different message in south Lebanon.

Like most messages in this contentious snippet of land, this one is delivered by bombshell and spread by shrapnel.

In what might be called the One-Week War, Israel responded massively to a spasm of short-range rocket attacks near its norther border. Although all 30 erratically aimed rockets slammed into Lebanon proper, the Israeli response came in escalating waves: artillery, then naval fire, then jet attacks, then ground assaults backed up by helicopters. At least 12 Palestinians were killed, including a 12-year-old child, reports from Lebanon said.

It was the largest military move in south Lebanon in more than two years. “We wanted to show great force. It was meant to send a signal,” said army spokesman Raanan Gissin. “This is Lebanon and the key to our northern border. We think the message was received.”

It is open to question whether the signal was meant only for the Palestine Liberation Organization, suspected aggressors in the rocket attack, or also to Israelis who are chafing under the restraint policy regarding Iraq. Washington wants to keep Israel out of the Persian Gulf War to prevent the conflict from expanding into a general Arab-Israeli conflict.

But Israeli hawks have criticized the government for holding back, saying that soon the country’s Arab adversaries will look at Israel as a patsy.

In 11 separate volleys, several missiles have hit Tel Aviv and Haifa, as well as remote areas of the occupied West Bank. Others were knocked out of the air by U.S.-supplied Patriot antimissile batteries. Two Israelis have died in the attacks, scores have been injured and property damage runs into the tens of millions of dollars.

Last week, an editorial in the pro-government Jerusalem Post warned: “The country cannot afford to be known as the paper tiger of the Middle East.”

In Lebanon, at least, there seems little danger of that. “Another Tel Aviv, we don’t need,” spokesman Gissin said. One newspaper columnist suggested that if rockets fell on northern Israel, the country would become a nation of refugees: residents of Tel Aviv fleeing Iraqi missiles and households in the Galilee running from shells launched in Lebanon.

The Israeli army is treating south Lebanon as a new front of the Gulf War. The PLO was acting on behalf of Iraq to provoke Israel, officials said. Despite the novel context, this nether world of competing militias and shifting alliances, outside agitation, secret dealings and hidden jails is an old front of familiar disputes. The point in south Lebanon is that little is new.

Ironically, both President Bush and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, avowed enemies, partly dedicated their Gulf military ventures to ending conflicts in places such as south Lebanon. Bush proposes a new, American-led “world order” to resolve disputes through international law and a muscular United Nations. Hussein, blaming the simmering conflicts on U.S.-inspired double standards, demands an end to violent wheeler-dealings in Lebanon and of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where 1.7 million Palestinians live under military rule.

A look at south Lebanon, even on a tightly controlled tour organized by the Israeli army, shows the difficulties of either conception taking root.

South Lebanon is post-card beautiful at this time of year. Winter rains have turned grasses green while snows brighten the distant peaks of jagged mountains. The skies alternately slump with low clouds or open broadly to a shining blue.

But when the Israeli and Lebanese guides speak of south Lebanon, it has nothing to do with such scenery. “To the west is the Shiite Muslim Amal militia backed by Syria. To the north is the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hezbollah, the Shiites backed by Iran. To the east in the Bekaa Valley is the Syrian army and intelligence network,” said Nabi Aburafia, a battalion commander for the South Lebanon Army, which Israel pays and supplies.

The SLA patrols a buffer along Israel’s northern border to keep anti-Israeli guerrillas away. Their olive drab uniforms come with Hebrew writing on the shirt pockets.

The Israeli-controlled zone completes the jigsaw map of south Lebanon. Muslim-, Christian-, Israeli-, Syrian- and Iranian-inspired groups control different sectors and cities. Numerous splinter factions also operate in the region, purchasing brief notoriety with attacks on one another and, especially, on the buffer.

Lebanon, as a whole, has been chopped up like this, with variations, since 1976 when a civil war broke out among religious and ethnic groups. Outsiders participated by backing one side or another in seemingly infinite combinations.

How about this: Syria and Israel, fierce antagonists, are both trying to suppress PLO attacks into south Lebanon--Israel for self-defense; Syria, because it backs other Palestinian groups and has been feuding with the PLO for years.

Or this: Israel once supported Christian groups in Beirut and central Lebanon and after invading in 1982 to drive out the PLO, tried to set up a Christian-led government. But guerrilla attacks forced Israel to retreat from most of Lebanon in 1985. The Christian cause was taken up by--guess who?--Saddam Hussein.

But last year, while Hussein was busy occupying Kuwait, Syria, which once also backed the Christians, crushed their resistance and has since tried to broker an end to the civil war.

In the south at least, Israel wants a say in the emerging Syrian formula and is wary of the dispatch of the new central government’s army to the south. Israel will be satisfied if the Lebanese army can repress the PLO and Hezbollah, both dedicated to driving Israel out of south Lebanon, military officers say. Otherwise, the Israelis threaten, the Lebanese army itself could be a target of reprisal.

“We won’t let the Lebanese army be an umbrella for attacks on Israel. The test will be if they prevent terrorist attacks,” said Gen. Yossi Peled, the Israeli officer in charge of the Lebanese zone. Peled said Israel will strike back against any assaults across its border or into the buffer zone and warned that the Lebanese army should not stand in the way.

Israel has no plans to let the Lebanese army into its security strip, nor for that matter, a mini-buffer zone recently established just to the north. The difference between the two areas is that, while Israeli troops freely patrol the strip paralleling its border, only SLA-loyal troops operate in the new extension, surrounding the Christian town of Jezzine.

The resistance to central government control has put the SLA in a bind. It favors a united Lebanon but dares not suggest that the Lebanese army, with its porous approach to control of PLO activities, replace the Israelis in the south. “This is a question that must be worked out internationally,” said SLA chief Antoine Lahad. “This is not a Lebanese internal matter.”

Lebanese attitudes toward the war with Iraq are also complex. “Inside themselves, the population may support Saddam Hussein, but not openly,” Lahad said. Peled, the Israeli general, took a more steely view: “They do not support things that are not in our interest.”

While Lebanon slowly pieces itself together--for the first time in many years, militias have been uprooted from Beirut--the southern buffer zone is progressively being Israel-ized. Roadside curbs are painted red and white, as in Tel Aviv. Signs carry Hebrew lettering and relatives of Lebanese soldiers working for Israel are permitted to cross the border to work, much in the way Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza do in Israel proper. Israeli goods are sold in the zone, although no Lebanese goods can cross the frontier.

Governing institutions for the 180,000 inhabitants are being built along Israeli lines. The SLA’s 2,600 soldiers, whose weapons are Israeli, are trained by Israeli instructors at a military school east of Marjayoun, a Greek Orthodox town that is the unofficial capital of the security strip.