Redirect permanent
 

Why won't this work in .htaccess?

Redirect permanent ^/webmail/ http://mail.server.com/webmail/
Redirect permanent ^/Books/ http://www.server.com/books/


It has been working great since years in apache and now litespeed can't parse these lines :-(

You need to remove the leading "/" of the matching URL when use a rewrite rule in .htaccess. It is the RewriteBase in Apache. Your rewrite rules must be used in Apache httpd.conf before, not in .htaccess.
Please try,

Redirect permanent ^webmail/ http://mail.server.com/webmail/
Redirect permanent ^Books/ http://www.server.com/books/

I ended up using this:

Redirectmatch 301 ^/webmail/ http://mail.server.com/webmail/
Redirectmatch 301 ^/Books/ http://www.server.com/books/

I will give your lines a try too...

That works.
I was confused Redirect with "RewriteRule", the directives should be