Israel's disastrous war in South Lebanon.

One can blame Hezbollah for many things, and they are not popular among wide sections of the Lebanese people including the Christians and the Druze, but they are a respectable force for social action in southern Lebanon, which accounts for their popularity among the Lebanese Shi'ites, and they know how to fight. The repeated statements from Israel and the United States to the effect that "Hezbollah must disarm" ring hollow because Hezbollah has not been defeated. There is justification for Hezbollah's claim that it was they who forced Israel to pull out of southern Lebanon (though not completely) a few years back. Their recent provocative action in capturing two Israeli soldiers within Israel while killing a number of other Israeli soldiers in the operation was an in-your-face response to what the Israelis were doing just then in Gaza and the West Bank, where they actually outdid Hezbollah by kidnapping dozens of members of the (Hamas) Palestinian government, an easier operation, because these prisoners were civilians, not soldiers. The Hezbollah raid was a stunning thing and the Israeli government had to respond to it with heavy force if it were to retrieve face.

It is almost as if the Hezbollah raid had been designed not so much to secure the freedom, in a prisoner-of-war exchange, of hundreds of long-time Hezbollah prisoners in Israel, as to provoke an unpopular and inevitably unsuccessful Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah have all the strategic advantages. When after several weeks the Israelis halted their offensive they did so because their tanks and tank-crews were being destroyed by advanced anti-tank missiles Hezbollah had in profusion. If the advance had not been halted, Israel would have lost many more tanks. It was this, more than the rain of Hezbollah rockets on northern Israeli cities, that turned the tide against the Israeli army in southern Lebanon.

The result has been catastrophic for the morale of the Israeli army, with junior and even senior officers and men criticising the conduct of the war, charging the minister of defence and the prime minister with treasonable incompetence. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is all but finished in that role. Both he and his defence minister have lost credibility and, as if that weren't enough, Olmert faces legal problems that could undo him anyway.

Mr Howard has rightly refused to contemplate sending any Australian contingent to participate in the mainly European peace-keeping force being assembled for deployment in southern Lebanon. The ground-rules there are going to be blurred at best. Better to keep out. Meanwhile, every day the need for a comprehensive solution to the Palestinian problem becomes more urgent. Unfortunately the present American administration cannot or will not achieve it (and it can only be achieved by a change of policy and massive pressure). However, it is looking increasingly likely that the next American administration, whether Democrat or Republican, will achieve this objective in America's own self-interest, and the Palestinians will be the big winners.