BEIRUT, Dec 17 (AFP) - The Muslim group Hizbullah will abandon its armed struggle against Israel if the Syrian and Lebanese tracks of the peace process end in success, a top Hizbullah official said Friday. It was the first time the group has given such an assurance.
"The strategic struggle ... will be transferred from the field of war to that of [resisting] the economic and political hegemony" of Israel, if peace accords are signed, said Mohammed Raad, head of Hizbullah's political office.
However, in a reference to the Syrian-Israeli talks, which resumed Wednesday after a break of nearly four years, Raad said: "What is happening in Washington will not lead to peace."
He said that even if Israel were forced to make concessions on some of its bedrock positions, this will not mean peace in the region, but will simply lead to a "settlement," adding that "a settlement is not eternal."
Israel "will remain an enemy which has plundered Jerusalem and Palestine," he said in a speech delivered at Iftar, the evening meal breaking the Ramadan fast, reported by the official ANI news agency.
Hizbullah fighters Friday made good their word not to retaliate for Israeli shelling of a Lebanese school, which wounded 20 children, four seriously, in a move Israeli analysts saw as evidence of their Syrian backers' desire not to jeopardize peace talks.
Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah told an Iftar Thursday that the shelling "deserved" reprisals against northern Israel but said on this occasion the group would limit itself to issuing a stern warning.
In the past Hizbullah has launched Katyusha rocket attacks against northern Israel in retaliation for civilian casualties, forcing residents of border areas into air raid shelters. But after Thursday's shelling, the Israeli army issued no warning to take to the shelters as it has routinely done in the past.
Analysts said the army's decision suggested Israel might have received assurances that there would be no reprisals from Hezbollah. "I think that the Syrians follow events [in Israel] closely enough to know that public opinion is important and that that an escalation of violence resulting in serious Israeli casualties would be a huge mistake," an Israeli academic said.
"Normally this sort of exchange would have led to a short-term escalation and the bombardment of villages in northern Israel but on this occasion it didn't happen," said Mark Heller, a researcher at the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University.
The Israeli army said the shelling of the school had been a "mistake."
An international panel supervising a 1996 truce between Israel and Lebanon met Friday at Lebanon's request and condemned the school attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak held urgent consultations about Lebanon with his chief of staff, Gen. Shaul Mofaz, on his return from his Washington talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara, Israeli radio reported.
After the conclusion of the talks between Israel and Lebanon's Syrian patron Thursday, a senior Israeli official said Damascus had pledged to "rein in the enemies of peace in Lebanon" in the context of any peace deal.
But sources close to the Syrian delegation said it was too soon to discuss containing the activities of Hizbullah and other groups that have the temporary backing of Damascus.
U.S. President Bill Clinton, who brokered the talks between Barak and Shara, said the two leaders had "agreed to take steps to ensure that these negotiations will be conducted in a productive and positive atmosphere."
Israeli officials have insisted that they will not negotiate with a gun to their heads and demanded that Syria use its preponderant influence in Lebanon to put an end to Hizbullah attacks while the talks go on.
Hizbullah has spearheaded the armed campaign to end Israel's 21 year occupation of south Lebanon.
