Beirut international airport, bombed by Israel early in the war, reopened yesterday for commercial flights for the first time in five weeks, airport sources said.

A plane belonging to Middle East Airlines, Lebanon’s flag carrier, will land with civilian passengers at around 1 p.m. (1000 GMT) from Jordan’s capital Amman. It will be followed by a Royal Jordanian flight, the sources said.

The resumption of flights will effectively end an Israeli air blockade of Lebanon. Israel had allowed only planes carrying humanitarian aid to use the airport. A naval blockade is still in force, though ships with relief goods have been let through. Two high-level UN envoys were due to arrive in Lebanon and Israel yesterday to assess implementation of the new truce. The envoys, Vijay Nambiar and Terje Roed-Larsen, will speak to officials in both countries, the United Nations said.

The United Nations has said it hopes 3,500 new UN troops can join UNIFIL within two weeks. Israeli Deputy Prime minister Shimon Peres said on Wednesday he expected most of the 15,000 Lebanese troops to be in place by the end of the month.

The Beirut government says its army will tolerate no armed group in the south, but has not vowed to hunt for Hizbollah arms. Many Hizbollah fighters are from border villages and Lebanese officials say privately they cannot be kept from their homes. Energy Minister Mohammed Fneish, one of two Hizbollah cabinet members, said he had agreed to the army deployment “without any reservations”. More than 200,000 refugees have already returned to the shattered south without waiting for Israeli troops to leave. France said it was willing to lead the UN force so long as it had a clear mandate and sufficient strength. Other troop-contributing nations are likely to include Indonesia and Malaysia – although neither country has diplomatic ties with Israel, which may lodge objections on those grounds.

In Tehran, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hailed Hizbollah’s “divine victory” over Israel as a victory for Islam in a letter to its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.

At least 1,110 people in Lebanon and 157 Israelis were killed in the conflict that erupted after Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

REACTIONS

<B>For majority of Arabs, Hezbollah won</B>

■ Babies have been named “Hezbollah” and “Nasrallah.” Even some die-hard secularists are praising the Shiite fundamentalist militia in the wake of its cease-fire with Israel. But behind the outpouring of support for Hezbollah in recent days, some in the Middle East are increasingly worried about the rising power of religious extremists. “The last thing I expected is to fall in love with a turbaned cleric,” wrote Howeida Taha, a strongly secular columnist in Egypt, in the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper this week. “I don’t like them, and of course they will never like somebody like me ... (but) I feel I’ve been searching for Nasrallah with my eyes, heart and mind. I feel Nasrallah lives within me.”

Yet, she added, “No matter how much we admire Hezbollah’s fighters’ bravery, the last thing we want to see is the rise of a religious party in Egypt.” Around the Arab world, Hezbollah was widely seen as the victor in the 34-day war with Israel, because of the tougher-than-expected resistance it put up under Israel’s relentless bombardment and heavy ground assaults. As a result, Hezbollah and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, have emerged as popular heroes.“Thanks be to God and to Hezbollah,” read the banner of an opposition independent weekly, Al-Destour, in Egypt yesterday. More than 120 babies born during the war have been named after Nasrallah in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, according to the official registrar there. In Gaza City, there are at least a dozen newborns named Hezbollah, (Party of God) Nasrallah (Victory from God) or Hassan. On an Islamist Web site for youth, based in Egypt, many women wrote saying they would love to marry someone like Nasrallah.“I want to marry one of Nasrallah’s three boys and dedicate myself to resistance and pride of my (Islamic) community,” said Noha Hussein, a university student in Cairo. Necklaces and key chains with his image are now in style, the Web site notes. Much of the enthusiasm has come from finally seeing an Arab military force dig in against Israel. Arab nations fought several wars with Israel – in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, as well as Israel’s previous two invasions of Lebanon. The first three were heavy defeats for Arab armies, and though Egypt’s army saw dramatic successes in 1973, the battle had swung to Israel’s favor by the time it ended.

In the eyes of many Arabs, Hezbollah’s performance shook the Israeli military’s image of invulnerability.“The Lebanese people may have lost a lot of economic and human resources .... but away from figures and calculations, they have achieved a lot of gains,” said Youssef al-Rashed, a columnist for the Kuwaiti daily Al-Anba.

Lebanon’s “heroic resistance fighters have proven to the world that Lebanese borders are not open to Israeli tanks without a price,” he wrote recently. “Lebanon was victorious in the battle of dignity and honor...”