Mr. Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said in Brussels today that any force must have a different set of instructions from the current, toothless United Nations peacekeeping force, which is still in the southern Lebanon. “It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground,” Mr. Annan said.

Giora Eiland, until recently Israel’s national security adviser, said an international force would not be in Israel’s interest if it only acted as a buffer. It can only be effective, he said, “if the other side does not want any provocation and wants to maintain quiet” and “if there’s a credible address on the other side,” with control over Lebanon.

He said Israel should insist that any international force “make it possible for Lebanon to do what it has to do and not be a buffer between us and them, which would reduce the Lebanese government’s responsibility.”

On a visit to Haifa, to a house struck the day before, the former Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, now in opposition, compared the current conflict to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. When Soviet missiles were aimed at the United States, he said, “President Kennedy had one policy: Remove the threat, remove the missiles. That should be our policy, and I believe it is, and we support it wholeheartedly.”

Iran, which set up Hezbollah in 1982 to fight Israel, has said that it will not accept the disarming and dismantling of the militant group. A senior Iranian politician, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, who is the president of the Iranian Parliament, told a rally in Tehran that Israelis should “flee occupied Palestine.” He called Israel “this filthy tumor” that “lies in the body of the Islamic world,” and he warned the United States that so long as Israel exists, “Muslims will not stop hating America.”

Image French nationals awaited to leave a ship that arrived in Cyprus on July 18. Credit... Eric Feferberg/AFP – Getty Images

Among the attacks in Lebanon today, a convoy of medical goods donated by the United Arab Emirates was hit in the Bekaa valley near Zahle, a mostly Christian town on one of the few open roads linking Syria and Beirut. Two trucks were destroyed and their drivers killed.