JERUSALEM/BEIRUT, 21 September 2006— Israel is unlikely to complete its withdrawal from Lebanon by the weekend, Israel’s Army chief said yesterday, backing away from earlier predictions. “We very much hoped it would happen by Friday, but in the dialogue we have been holding with the United Nations and the Lebanese Army there are a few issues to be wrapped up,” Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz told Israel Radio. “I hope it will take place in the next few days, but it looks likely to be after the holiday,” he said, referring to the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which begins tomorrow night.

Halutz said earlier this week that Israeli forces should be able to quit Lebanon by the start of the Jewish New Year. That timetable was confirmed earlier yesterday by Defense Minister Amir Peretz as Germany and Malaysia took steps to beef up an international peacekeeping force. “This is our intent, we definitely want to complete it,” Peretz said during a tour of southern Israel. Israeli forces have been gradually pulling out from territory the army captured during the monthlong war with the Hezbollah resistance group that ended in a cease-fire on Aug. 14.

Israel went to war after Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a July 12 cross-border raid. Nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis, two-thirds of them soldiers, were killed in the conflict.

Earlier this week, the army said it had withdrawn from more than 80 percent of territory captured during the war, handing it over to UN peacekeepers under UNIFIL II, an expanded version of the original peacekeeper garrison in the area. The UN peacekeeping force in south Lebanon aimed at bolstering a truce has been boosted to 5,000 troops and Hezbollah plans to stage a “victory” rally tomorrow. “We have reached the 5,000 troops,” Alexander Ivanko, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) told AFP yesterday.

Ivanko said the number of peacekeepers had more than doubled, and that Israel’s key condition for withdrawing from its northern neighbor had been achieved. The prewar number of about 2,000 UNIFIL troops, he said, had been boosted by three new battalions from France, Italy and Spain, although it would still take weeks for all the new troops to be deployed in the south. Troops from other countries, notably Indonesia, would follow in October and November, he said, stressing, however, that the operation posed a “logistical nightmare” for UNIFIL.

In Berlin, the German Parliament yesterday authorized sending a naval contingent of up to 2,400 personnel to patrol Lebanon’s coast, in Germany’s first military foray into the Middle East since World War II. But because of the Nazi regime’s responsibility for the Holocaust, Germany has ruled out sending ground troops to the region to avoid the possibility of German soldiers clashing with Israeli troops.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, is preparing to celebrate a “divine victory” over Israeli forces with a rally tomorrow in the southern suburbs of Beirut, although the presence of its chief Hassan Nasrallah remains uncertain due to fears for his safety. The demonstration, on the Muslim weekly day of prayers, was called before the Israeli announcement of its imminent withdrawal.

“We are preparing an open site. The main leaders of Hezbollah will be present, but we cannot say if Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah will be there, for security reasons,” Hezbollah spokesman Hossein Rahal said. Nasrallah, whose name means “victory of God,” has not been seen in public since the day the war broke out, after Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers. While his whereabouts remains secret, the Hezbollah chief has made a string of Arab television appearances.

Since the Aug. 14 cease-fire under UN Resolution 1701, the Lebanese Army has in parallel with the beefed up UN force been slowly returning to south Lebanon, where Hezbollah held sway since the end of Israel’s occupation six years ago. Almost every village now has a military post, either fixed or under tents, topped by the red, green and white Lebanese flag.