Hezbollah hasn't been "disarmed" and the 2 captured Israeli soldiers haven't been returned. The whole travesty was a dead loss. The war was abruptly called off when Olmert couldn't bear the rising death-toll, a fact that was not lost on Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah said from the very beginning that the only way to beat Israel was by "killing soldiers and destroying weapons". Olmert's retreat just proves that that Nasrallah was right.

Kenneth Besig summarized the feelings of many Israelis in his comments in the Jerusalem Post:

"Fewer than 5,000 poorly-armed Hezbollah terrorists stood off the mighty IDF for over a month. An Islamic terrorist gang with no tanks, no artillery, no fighter jets, no attack helicopters, and just a few RPG's and rifles held to a standstill nearly 30,000 crack IDF troops with the finest tanks, the best artillery, the fastest and most advanced fighter-jets and attack helicopters in the world. And they can still empty our northern communities with their rockets whenever they want. If that is not a victory, then the word has no meaning."



Besig may be wrong when he calls Hezbollah "terrorists", but many Israelis agree with his overall analysis. Israel may have decimated Lebanon, but no one believes they won the war.

Since the ceasefire began, the recriminations and finger-pointing have only gotten worse. The daily gnashing-of-teeth in the media has reached a crescendo with every major newspaper calling for the resignations of Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz and "George Armstrong" Halutz. Disgruntled reservists are flocking to the streets in public protests calling for "heads-to-role" while hundreds of IDF regulars have signed petitions demanding an independent inquiry into the botched war plans.

"I'm telling Ehud Olmert and Emir Peretz to look me in the eye and tell me they are fit to hold their posts," said Sgt. Major Lior Vilnes one of the many protestors.

So what does this firestorm of public outrage auger for Lebanon and the prospects for peace in the region?

The probability of peace "breaking out" has never looked more dismal. Public opinion is compelling Olmert to restart the war to salvage his battered career. Already, government officials have begun talking about a "second round" of hostilities, a euphemism that is being reiterated with worrisome regularity in the press. The mood in Israel is ugly and many believe that it foreshadows greater violence ahead.

Olmert is surrounded by "hawks" from the Sharon era who brush aside any plan that doesn't involve force. That makes military action all the more likely even though the objectives are as ambiguous as they were before.

Eli Yishai, Vice Prime Minister, sums up the current thinking in the Olmert administration:

"No army in the world is more moral than the IDF....We cannot be bleeding hearts while our citizens are being hurt. If Lebanese citizens pay the price, they will rise up against Hezbollah. I have proposed that we damage infrastructure and flatten villages because Hezbollah personnel must know they are not immune. We should make it clear to them that all residents in villages from which firepower is launched at IDF soldiers will be warned and required to leave their homes in 48 hours. And later these villages will be bombed from the air. That policy would have assured that Lebanese citizens would not permit Hezbollah to live next to them." (Haaretz)


Isn't this the same flawed-logic that led to "shock and awe"? What gives people like Yishai and Olmert such confidence in violence when it hasn't worked in 40 years of occupation?

The penchant among the Israeli high-command for resolving political issues with brute force doesn't bode well for Lebanon. Israel wants to settle accounts with Nasrallah and reestablish its dominance in the region, but that can only be accomplished by dealing a knockout blow to Hezbollah.

Olmert has no chance of defeating Hezbollah. Guerilla groups disappear in one place and pop up in another; crushing them is nearly impossible. The clueless Prime Minister is probably more interested in "saving face" than in protecting Israel's national security. In truth, Olmert's bruised vanity won't allow him to be remembered as the "man who lost the war to Hezbollah". This will lead to a steady escalation of incitements (like yesterday's commando raid on Balbak) which will eventually trigger all-out war.

Restarting the conflict will only create greater threats to Israel's security. It will strengthen the Lebanese resistance, weaken the already-feeble Siniora government, rouse more hatred for the United States, destabilize friendly Arab regimes, and further erode the perception of Israeli invincibility.

Israel has little to gain and everything to lose.

Never the less, Olmert will probably disregard the consequences and blunder ahead in the futile hope of silencing his critics while indulging his right-wing allies. Anything less than a full-blown assault on his Lebanese arch-rival would be tantamount to political seppuku.

Former Shin Bet chief and current Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, made a reasonable proposal that could deescalate tensions and extract Olmert from his current predicament. Dichter said, "We must not sit and wait for the next war. A peace agreement in exchange for giving back the Golan Heights would disconnect Syria from Iran and disarm Hezbollah."
Bingo.

Dichter's advice is dead-on. If Israel conceded the Golan to Syria, then Syria would cut-off supplies and weaponry to Hezbollah setting the stage for a comprehensive peace treaty between the 3 nations.

It's a long-shot, but it could work and it reduces the liklihood of more fighting.

Unfortunately, Olmert quickly dismissed Dichter's plan saying, "We are not going into any adventure when terror is on their side. When Syria stops support for terror, then we will be happy to negotiate with them."

Blah, blah, blah; terror, terror, terror; the same worn mantra we've heard from Bush for the last 5 years while the entire region is doused in gasoline and ready to light up like a Roman candle.

Olmert has erected another road-block to peace and set the stage for a "second round" of devastation and bloodshed. His choice is bound to create more enemies for Israel while condemning thousands of Lebanese civilians to death.

That's a strategy for failure, not success

By the way, the test of good faith in reading anything on this issue is whether an attempt is made to claim that the Israeli attack on Lebanese civilians was an act of self-defense. If you see even a hint of 'self-defense', the writer is incapable of understanding that it is not acceptable to slaughter civilians and destroy an entire country in retaliation for the capture of two soldiers, particularly when:

* The soldiers were almost certainly captured in Lebanon;
* There have recently been hundreds of incidents along the border, almost all instigated by Israel, and none of which led to military escalation;
* Hezbollah captured the soldiers in order to exchange them for Lebanese held illegally by Israel;
* the Israeli attack on Lebanon had been planned for at least a year before the Israeli soldiers were captured.

An inability to comprehend that the Israel-has-a-right-to-defend-itself defense has moral limits is the unique Israeli/Zionist form of psychopathy. It is based - and unfortunately this in now undeniable, and forms the basis for the right-left Israeli consensus that the problem with the attack was that not enough Lebanese were killed - in the unstated assumption that Jews are the only human beings that have moral worth. This also explains why prominent Jewish 'human rights' advocates seem to have no interest in the plight of the Palestinians. Only human beings have human rights, and the only full human beings are Jewish.

There is no obvious direct military threat to Israel's existence. Hezbollah's victory - and it was a clear victory, with the small number of Hezbollah military funerals leading to the conclusion that the death ratio was probably well over two-to-one in favor of Hezbollah - was completely defensive. Nevertheless, the entire equation of Israel's existence has always been based on the idea that no Arab could defeat an IDF operation. That delusion has been shattered. The problem was both at the level of the highest military and political planners, and at the level of the IDF, and at the level of the Israeli soldiers.

The planners seemed to think that extensive intentional bombing of civilians would cause the Lebanese to blame Hezbollah for their problems, thus removing the civilian support for Hezbollah, thus leading to an easy Israeli military victory. Instead, as any fool could tell you would happen, Lebanese civilian opinion went entirely against the people dropping the bombs, and entirely towards the only group in the country with the ability to defend the Lebanese people. The Israelis based their analysis on the NATO success at bombing Serbian civilians, missing the point that Serbia had a functioning government in charge of the whole country which cared about the status of its civilian population. NATO blackmailed the central Serbian government into capitulating on the basis that it would keep slaughtering civilians until the government gave up. Since the central Lebanese government had no control over Hezbollah, the bombing plan was flawed from the outset, and just served to strengthen Hezbollah. Once again, the dream of military planners, that a war can be won from the air, has been proven to be wrong.

The Israelis are noticing that the IDF has become sloppy and ineffective, largely based on the fact that it has been exclusively employed as a police unit in charge of brutalizing Palestinian civilians. Israeli soldiers, used to showing force to groups of cowering Palestinian grandmothers, arrogantly stood around in Lebanese mountain passes, allowing Hezbollah to take them out in groups using anti-tank weapons. Even worse, the entire fighting ability of the IDF, both tactics and military hardware, has been formed around battling Palestinian small arms fire in urban settings on relatively flat ground. In the hills of Lebanon, facing well trained soldiers with anti-tank weapons, the Israelis were sitting ducks. A fighting unit geared around an ability to fire tank shells into groups of Palestinian schoolchildren was no match for Hezbollah. There is some karma in this: a history of brutalizing Palestinian civilians has made the IDF ineffective as a fighting force against real soldiers.

The final problem - and mentioning this is the ultimate taboo - is with the soldiers themselves. Israelis have always fought valiantly on the theory that the Jewish people had their backs against the wall and that the fight to preserve the Jewish people from anti-Semitic annihilation was just. Sending conscripts - many of them born in the Soviet Union and dragged by their phony-Jew parents to Israel as part of the ongoing Israeli scam to increase its non-Arab population, and with no interest in Israel or Jewish history or culture - who correctly understand that there is no real 'existential threat' to Israel, to risk their lives so the settlers can have swimming pools full of stolen water, isn't quite the same thing. In fact, it was the Hezbollah soldiers who benefited from the fact that they knew their fight to defend their families and their country was just. We are now seeing the lies that form the basis of racist Israeli statehood finally coming home to roost.

In New York, UN delegates were holding technical discussions with Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia and Nepal - the few countries to have already given a firm commitment to put troops on the ground, according to UN sources.

But a more formal "troop generating meeting" that the UN had hoped to convene early this week was awaiting the outcome of talks in Brussels on Wednesday between European Union countries mulling a role in the force.

The Brussels talks are aimed at clarifying the European contributions to the force, which is expected to swell to a troop strength of 15,000 in the weeks after the vanguard force of 3,500 has been deployed.

So far, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal and Spain have expressed willingness to deploy troops, but have fallen short of the offers the United Nations had hoped for.

And although Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi was quoted as telling UN Secretary General Kofi Annan Monday that Italy was available to lead the mission, the offer appeared to be conditional on a new UN resolution.

Prodi said he wanted the Security Council to clarify the force's mandate - something the UN has repeatedly said should not be necessary, while French diplomats for their part said they had not been advised of any new resolution.

France had earlier been considered likely to lead the force but disappointed the UN with a pledge of only 200 extra troops, prompting US President George W. Bush to express hopes that a larger French commitment would be forthcoming.

And despite talks at the UN on Thursday aimed at clarifying the force's rules of engagement and mandate, France has continued to ask the UN for clarification and security guarantees.

The Europeans fear being drawn into renewed fighting between Shiite militia Hezbollah and Israeli forces currently withdrawing from southern Lebanon.

Disarmament of the Iranian- and Syrian-backed militant group is one of the key stumbling blocks, with the United States saying it is a priority, as outlined in a UN resolution passed in 2004.

Bush said Monday there would be a fresh UN resolution giving "further instructions to the international force," throwing up confusion over whether Washington wanted a further UN vote before the peacekeepers deploy.

He made the comments at a hastily-convened press conference, but White House officials quickly warned that he may have misspoken, and it was not immediately clear whether the US was planning to bring a new resolution.

US ambassador to the UN John Bolton later said that while the United States wanted to see Hezbollah disarmed, there was as yet no firm plan to present a new resolution to the Security Council.

He made clear that deploying peacekeepers was the priority. "I think the initial force can be deployed now but it's obviously closely linked and we want the disarming of Hezbollah to be accomplished rapidly," he said.

The fragility of the UN-brokered truce was underscored over the weekend when Israeli commandos launched a raid deep into Lebanon. Israel also reported killing at least two Hezbollah guerrillas late Monday in southern Lebanon.

Meanwhile, UN sources speaking on condition of anonymity said Annan could soon visit countries in the region, including Syria and Iran, as part of efforts to ensure the ceasefire is fully implemented.

On Wednesday in Paris, Livni is expected to meet French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as her Belgian counterpart Karel De Gucht.

Israel has criticised France's decision to limit to 200 the number of troops it is willing to contribute to a UN force in Lebanon.

As the former colonial power in Lebanon, Paris had been expected to take the lead in putting together a robust international force of up to 15,000.

On Thursday, Livni will hold talks with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema before returning to Israel.

Rome has declared itself ready and willing to assume command of the UN force if France fails to contribute significant numbers of troops.

Belgium is one of various European countries to have expressed willingness to deploy troops without pledging firm numbers as hoped by the United Nations.

Resolution 1701 sets the groundwork for an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, the deployment of 15,000 international peacekeepers and the need for the two missing soldiers to be freed.

The meeting comes as differences have surfaced over the expansion of the UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon to monitor a shaky ceasefire between Israel and the Muslim Shiite militia Hezbollah.

France, the former colonial power in Lebanon, has begun to deploy a contingent of 200 troops, a much smaller number than expected by Israel and the international community.

Meanwhile Germany has said it would limit its commitment to the force to a naval unit and ruled out sending combat troops or police.

In a call to Merkel on Friday, Chirac called for "a necessary balance in the distribution of the contingents which must reflect the engagement of all the international community, including the European countries".

The European Union's Finnish presidency said Sunday that member states would meet this week in Brussels, probably on Wednesday, to discuss their contributions to a UN force in Lebanon.

The meeting between Merkel and Chirac will be part of regular informal consultations between the German and French governments held every six to eight weeks.

It would be tantamount to "a withdrawal of Lebanese sovereignty and a hostile position," he was quoted as saying.

Assad was referring to the possibility of stationing international forces alongside Lebanese army troops on Lebanon's border with Syria under UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which halted a month-long Israeli offensive against Lebanon last week.

The joint force would enforce an embargo on arms shipments to the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, whose abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12 sparked the Israeli onslaught.

Washington has accused Syria of acting as a transit point for shipments of arms and other supplies from Iran to Hezbollah.

Iran and Syria have denied the claim.

Israeli public radio reported Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has conditioned the lifting of Israel's ongoing air and sea blockade of Lebanon on the deployment of international troops at Beirut airport and on Lebanon's border with Syria.

According to the excerpts of Assad's remarks, the Syrian leader called on the Lebanese government to shoulder its responsibilities and not undertake any action that would mar relations between Beirut and Damascus.

Assad also ruled out the demarcation of borders in the disputed Shebaa Farms area as long as it was occupied by Israel.

"No demarcation of borders in the Shebaa Farms before Israeli forces pull out of the area," he was quoted as saying.

Syria agrees in principle to Lebanon's claim to the Shebaa Farms, which were seized from Damascus by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Israel disputes the claim, saying it withdrew from all Lebanese territory in May 2000.

Assad also told Dubai Television that Hezbollah's "victory" during the month-long fighting with Israel "was sufficient to teach Israel a lesson."

Assad denied that Syria, which along with Iran is accused by the United States and Israel of backing Hezbollah and fomenting the recent conflict, was isolated.

"Whoever isolates Syria gets himself sidelined from major issues (in the Middle East)," he said.

In a speech last week, Assad implicitly attacked Arab countries that were critical of Hezbollah's abduction of the two Israeli soldiers and accused anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians who hold a majority in parliament of doing Israel's bidding.

His outburst, which some analysts saw as a measure of Syria's isolation, drew sharp reactions in Lebanon as well as in the press of some of the Arab countries he targeted, and which included Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

On peace with Israel, Assad was quoted by Dubai Television as saying that there is still a chance for peace in the region, but that time was running out and that "the current generation is the last peace generation."

"He said he is thinking about it," Prodi told reporters at his vacation villa in Tuscany, after a telephone conversation last night with Putin. Prodi's spokesman confirmed his comments. Putin "has started talking to his collaborators and he'll give us an answer in the coming days," he said.

Lebanon faces a "security vacuum" unless the peacekeepers and Lebanese soldiers are deployed to oversee the cease-fire, UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said after visits to Lebanon and Israel yesterday. There is "reason for pessimism" until peacekeepers are in place, he said.

The cease-fire that came into force Aug. 14 halted a 33-day conflict between Israel and the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group. European Union ambassadors are meeting in Brussels today to prepare a UN foreign ministers' meeting on Aug. 25 to determine Europe's contributions to the force.

The conflict in Lebanon began after Hezbollah abducted two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border attack on July 12. Israeli air strikes were followed by a ground offensive. About 1,200 Lebanese were killed and 4,500 wounded. Reports say 159 Israelis were killed.

The Lebanese army has taken up positions in about 70 percent of the area between the border with Israel and the Litani River, Riszard Morszymski, deputy spokesman for the UN force in the area, said Tuesday. The Litani River is about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the border.

The Lebanese army's line is about 8-10 kilometers from the border, while the Israeli military controls a strip about 4-5 kilometers inside Lebanon, Morszymski said. UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) soldiers are deployed in between.

There are those who break down when they recall the massacre at Joub Jannine - and there are the Israelis who gave permission to the refugees to leave Marjayoun, who specified what roads they should use, and who then attacked them with pilotless, missile-firing drone aircraft. Five days after being asked to account for the tragedy, they had last night still not bothered to explain how they killed at least seven refugees and wounded 36 others just three days before a UN ceasefire came into effect.

It is one of the untold stories of the Israeli-Hizbollah war; there are others - infinitely more bloody - but the ultimate tragedy of these largely Christian refugees involved a raft of Lebanese officers and ministers, the Prime Minister of Lebanon, the US ambassador and the Israeli Defence Ministry.

It all began on 10 August when the Israelis staged a small ground offensive into Lebanon after a month of massive bombing of Lebanese villages in the south. Brig-Gen Adnan Daoud, commanding a mixed force of 350 Lebanese paramilitary police and soldiers at the barracks in the pretty Christian town of Marjayoun, found a man at the gate at 9am, an Israeli officer calling himself Col Ashaya. Brig-Gen Daoud, whose men were not fighting the Israelis, called the Lebanese Interior Minister, Ahmad Fatfat, who "endorsed" - Fatfat's word - Daoud's decision to let him in. "Ashaya" spent four hours looking round the barracks to assure himself that there were no Hizbollah members there. Then he left. Daoud put a white flag on the guardhouse.

But at 4pm that afternoon, an Israeli tank unit approached the barracks and started to shoot their way in. Daoud was again told by Fatfat to let in the Israelis who, according to Daoud, informed him that "we are the occupiers and we are in charge". An Israeli officer then locked Daoud into a room.

Thousands of Christians in Marjayoun now feared for their lives. According to several aid workers, Hizbollah were firing rockets from behind the town's hospital, which was immediately abandoned by the Lebanese Red Cross. The inhabitants believed, with good reason, that Hizbollah's missiles would be redirected from Israel on to Marjayoun itself now that the town had been taken over by Israeli troops and tanks.

Locked in his room, Daoud now called Fatfat again and Fatfat called the Lebanese Prime Minister, Fouad Siniora, who, by chance, was talking to the US ambassador to Beirut, Jeffrey Feltman. Feltman - either via the State Department or directly to the US embassy in Tel Aviv - told his diplomats to call the Israeli Defence Ministry; and they swiftly replied that there should be no Israeli troops in Daoud's barracks. But the Israelis in Marjayoun refused to believe what Daoud told them.

Marjayoun's inhabitants, however, were now in a state of panic and Daoud called Fatfat at 7pm to start arranging for a refugee convoy north from Marjayoun to Beirut. The Lebanese government, according to Fatfat, called the United Nations command in southern Lebanon at 5am the next day, 11 August, to seek clearance from the Israelis to allow the thousands of refugees to be convoyed north. The UN, according to the government in Beirut, subsequently notified Gen Abdulrahman Shaiti, assistant to the head of Lebanese military intelligence, that the convoy had permission from the Israelis to travel.

Two UN armoured vehicles, crewed by Indian troops, subsequently turned up in Marjayoun to find at least 3,000 people, including Shia Muslim refugees from the surrounding, devastated villages, waiting to leave. "We had a total agreement that they would go out to the Bekaa [Valley] from [Alain] Pellegrini [the UN commander]," Fatfat says. "The road was also agreed." But there were delays. Part of the road ahead had been heavily bombed and had to be repaired. It was 4pm before the convoy crept slowly out of Marjayoun, Daoud's 350 soldiers in the lead. The UN vehicles then abandoned the convoy at Hasbaya, the northern limit of UN operations, leaving the refugees dangerously exposed. The UN had already warned the Lebanese authorities that it was late for the convoy to leave.

"They went so slowly, I was enraged," a relief worker recalls. "People at friendly villages would come out and give the refugees food and water and want to talk to them and people would stop to greet old friends as if this was tourism. The convoy was only going at five miles an hour. It was getting dark." The 3,000 refugees now trailed up the Bekaa after nightfall and were approaching the ancient Kifraya vineyards at Joub Jannine when disaster struck them at 8pm.

"The first bomb hit the second car," Karamallah Dagher, a reporter for Reuters, said. "I was half way back down the road and my friend Elie Salami was standing there, asking me if I had any spare gasoline. That's when the second missile struck and Elie's head and shoulders were blown away. His daughter Sally is 16 and she jumped from the car and cried out: 'I want my Daddy, I want my Daddy.' But he was gone." Speaking of the killings yesterday, Dagher breaks down and cries. He tried to carry his arthritic mother from his own car but she complained that he was hurting her so he put her back in the passenger seat and sat beside her, waiting for a violent death which mercifully never came. But it arrived for Collette Makdissi al-Rashed, wife of the mukhtar, who was beheaded in her Cherokee jeep, and for a member of the Tahta family from from Deir Mimas, and for two other refugees, and for a Lebanese soldier and for 35-year-old Mikhael Jbaili, the Red Cross volunteer from Zahle, who was blasted into the air when a rocket exploded behind him.

"There was panic," the Marjayoun mayor, Fouad Hamra, said. "Many people drove away. They had a clearance; everything should have been OK. If Hizbollah was supposed to be carrying weapons at night, they would have been travelling in the opposite direction!"

Who flew the drones? An Israeli soldier of the invasion force? A nameless officer in the Israel Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv? The Israelis knew a civilian convoy was on the road. Yet they sent their pilotless machines to attack it. Why? Last night, the Israeli Defence Ministry had not responded to inquiries from reporters who asked for the answer last Friday.