The Saudi View.

Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has become he hero of the Muslim street. Those who wanted to see pain inflicted on Israelis organised massive parades in his favour in Damascus, Amman, Baghdad and Cairo. The Saudis, however, said Nasrallah was leading the Arabs to where Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser had led them in 1967 - to unforgivable defeat. Because of Nasser's adventurism, the Arabs lost the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The Saudis warn that, like Nasser, Nasrallah was greatly misinformed about the might of the enemy and underestimated Israel's standing and friends in the international community, which since 1967 have exceeded those of the Arabs.

Many moderates in the Arab world, including the regimes of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other GCC states, see Nasrallah as the new Nasser who will lead his people to defeat. Saudi Arabia even issued an official statement warning against "irresponsible adventurism adopted by certain elements within the state" in Lebanon. The Saudis did not, however, mention Hizbullah by name.

The Saudis are historically at odds with Iran and tactical allies of MP Sa'd al-Hariri, the current leader of Lebanon's Sunni community, to oppose the adventurism of Nasrallah. Too much Saudi political capital, from the days of former PM Rafiq al-Hariri, is at stake in Lebanon. The Saudis are the traditional backers of Lebanon's Sunni community, which wants a Westernised, economy-oriented country and not a hotbed for revolutionary warfare. They cannot afford to losing their influence in Lebanon and have it replaced by that of Iran - which is exactly what happens whenever Hizbullah gets the upper hand in Lebanese politics.

Iran is seen as the leader of a predominantly Shi'ite alliance - an anti-US axis stretching through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine - and in this the Ba'thist dictatorship of Assad in Damascus is serving a second lieutenant to Tehran. For his part, in an inflammatory speech last week, Nasrallah addressed the Saudis directly, saying: "We have been adventurers for all our life and brought nothing but honour and freedom for our country".

On July 14, Nasrallah had caused more divisions in the Arab world. Just when it seemed he was being defeated, he came out on Hizbullah's Al-Manar TV and announced that an Israeli warship off the coast of Beirut had been hit by Hizbullah rockets. Four Israeli sailors were killed as the attack as later confirmed by Israel.

In a later speech, Nasrallah again defiantly addressed the Israelis, saying: "You wanted an open war and we are ready for an open war". He added: "Soon you will find how stupid your new government is and how it is incapable of reading the situation. It has no experience. You said in your opinion polls that you believe me more than anyone else. Believe me now - you attacked every house in Lebanon and you will pay for that". He said: "Our homes will not be the only ones to be destroyed. Our children will not be the only ones to die". Then Nasrallah landed rockets inside Israel, on the city of Tiberias - another attack unprecedented since 1948. Israel responded with even mightier force. For days it has been bombing the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hizbullah and the Shi'ite population are located. More than 500,000 people live in the district, known as al-Dahiya. Residents left their homes and are sleeping in the streets.

The Financial Times on July 20 quoted Lebanese PM Seniora as saying Israel's military offensive would backfire, suggesting it could bolster support for Hizbullah rather than undermine it. He said the Israeli bombings, which by then had killed 300 people and wounded over 1,000 in a week and caused massive destruction were more violent than during Israel's 1982 invasion. He said: "The result of this has been unprecedented in Lebanese history. What's happening has brought the country to its knees...and rebuilding Lebanon will take years".

Siniora, who has made clear he believes Hizbullah's action was "not right", said if Israel sent in ground troops, the army would no longer stand on the sidelines. He claimed that Syria and Iran, the main backers of Hizbullah, "are not to be considered absent from what's happening in the country". He said he was seeking a comprehensive solution that would involve extending the state's sovereignty over all Lebanon and settling all outstanding disputes between his country and Israel, including those over land and prisoners.

Siniora, however, made clear that Lebanon could no longer return to the status quo that preceded the Hizbullah operation, saying: "It would be a major crime to Lebanon if we returned to the status quo". He was referring to the return of the occupied Sheb'a farms, a strip of border land which Beirut claims sovereignty over but which the UN says belongs to Syria, not Lebanon, and the release of Lebanese detainees in Israeli jails. He said: "It's high time to really make clear the agendas of all concerned".

Amid rising discontent in Lebanon over the muted response of leading Arab states to the conflict, Siniora said Arab support was "less than we really need and deserve". He expressed disappointment with the international community's reluctance to pressure Israel to stop the offensive, saying: "I'm disappointed with the reaction of world public opinion - it expresses sympathy with Lebanon but people are not asking the right questions. The abduction of soldiers is not a right cause but no one talks about the Lebanese detainees in prison [in Israel] as if they were a bunch of sheep". He said he was to rally people and not to enter into disagreements, whether within Lebanon or with the outside world. He said: "At this point many [people] are delaying posing the questions and the issue of who is responsible - what matters is stopping the aggression, accepting a ceasefire and dealing with the issues that preceded it - the abduction of the two soldiers".

Recalling Hizbullah's close ties to Iran and Syria, both Washington and Tel Aviv seem to argue the clashes has the support of these two states. Israel's heavy-handed response, which risks embroiling the entire region in a war, is somewhat unprecedented and unlikely to have been predicted by Hizbullah, despite Israel's shelling of the Gaza Strip after Palestinian fighters recently took an Israeli soldier prisoner.

Syria is in a weak position - the Bush administration refuses to talk to it, its diplomatic cards limited and its army in shambles. Israel recently humiliated Syrian President Bashar al-Assad  by having Israeli jets break the sound barrier over his palace. Assad's inability to respond was a poignant reminder to the Arabs of their impotence.

Hizbullah is in a difficult situation. Dragging Israel into the heart of Beirut, recently rebuilt after decades of warfare, sends Lebanese society the signal that Hizbullah's continued existence comes at great peril for Lebanon's future. The Washington Post has quoted Yassin Soueid, a retired Lebanese general, as saying: "It led us to a war we are not prepared to fight. Israel could hit the presidential palace... They can hit wherever they want, and there is nothing we can do about it".

Iran, on the other hand, is playing a high-risk game with the West over the nuclear issue. Its strategy is to continuously defy the US, but stop short of trapping itself in a military confrontation it knows it cannot win. While Ahmadi-Nejad has warned Israel it "will face a crushing response" if it attacks Syria - accused Arab rulers who have refused to cheer on Hizbullah of being "complicit in the Zionist regime's barbarism" - there is little evidence showing an active Iranian role in the fighting.

Hizbullah calls for the destruction of Israel, but its political wing has 18% of the seats in the Lebanese parliament. The US, UK, Israel and other Western powers consider Hizbullah a terrorist group backed by Iran and Syria. In Lebanon, the group had first hoped to transform the whole country into a Shi'ite state. But it has abandoned that objective for a more inclusive platform. About 60% of the 3.8m population of Lebanon is Muslim, most of them Shi'ite. The rest is almost all Christian. A 15-year civil war between Muslims and Christians ended in 1990. Shi'ite radicals in Iraq led by Muqtada al-Sadr are following in Hizbullah's footsteps.

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah on July 20 emerged from hiding to deny that his command structure had been damaged by an Israeli attack earlier in the day. Speaking on the Arab satellite TV al-Jazeera, he said that a massive Israeli strike on one of Beirut's southern suburbs, using 23 tons of explosives, had not hit its intended target, stating: "I can confirm, without exaggerating or using psychological warfare, that we have not been harmed". The group earlier took reporters on a visit to its devastated stronghold of Haret Hreik in southern Beirut but did not provide access to the adjacent neighbourhood where Israel said it targeted a "leadership bunker". In his interview, Nasrallah ridiculed Israel's claims that it was making headway in its attacks, saying: "All this Israeli talk that they hit 50% of our rocket capabilities and warehouses, this talk is all wrong and nonsense". The Financial Times on July 21 quoted a Lebanese military expert as saying he doubted that Israel had made much headway, explaining: "Hizbullah has no visible personnel infrastructure on the ground. They are organised in cells, they look like civilians, they move fast and they are trained to hide". As for the missiles, the expert, "a former Lebanese army officer", said the longest range rockets were buried in the south and in the eastern Beqa' valley, "so deep that bombs cannot reach them and guarded by suicide commandos".

The Haret Hreik area of Beirut, where many Hizbullah offices were located, has been changed beyond recognition by the bombardments since July 12. The damage was not limited to the intended targets - most of those were destroyed - but the explosions caused heavy damage to surrounding buildings, with whole facades blown out.

In the south, Hizbullah fighters were engaged in fierce clashes with Israeli soldiers on the border. The group's spokesman in Beirut said this showed Israeli claims that only military targets were hit were clearly wrong. A Hizbullah official said: "We have no fighters here in Beirut, they are all in the south, on the front".

Thousands of foreign nationals continued to leave as evacuation efforts were stepped up. Many Lebanese who had to stay behind voiced concern that Israel would step up its attacks once foreigners had left.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on July 20 warned the UNSC there were big obstacles to quick end to the violence, but urged it to demand an immediate end of hostilities to save lives, send aid and to allow space for diplomacy. In a speech which blamed Hizbullah for triggering the crisis but condemned Israel's "excessive" reaction, Annan laid out a formula for a lasting ceasefire and revival of the peace process. His package included the release of abducted Israeli soldiers, an expanded peacekeeping force, urgent aid and reconstruction measures, and an international conference to set timelines for the restoration of full Lebanese sovereignty and dismantling militia. Annan had tough words for both Hizbullah and Israel, saying: "Whatever other agendas they may serve, Hizbullah's actions, which it portrays as defending Palestinian and Lebanese interests, in fact do neither. On the contrary, they hold an entire nation hostage". But while reaffirming Israel's right to self-defence, Annan condemned its disproportionate reaction: "Whatever damage Israel's operations may be doing to Hizbullah's military capabilities, they are doing nothing to decrease popular support for Hizbullah in Lebanon or the region, but are doing a great deal to weaken the government of Lebanon". Israel's UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman said "three key elements of this crisis - terrorism, Iran and Syria" were not addressed in Annan's speech, adding: "The first thing that must be addressed is cessation of terror, before we can talk about a cessation of hostilities. Diplomacy can play a part only after terror has been taken care of". US ambassador to the UN John Bolton insisted any solution would need to "fundamentally change the realities of the region", but added: "No one has explained how you conduct a ceasefire with a group of terrorists".

With Hizbullah rockets still falling across northern Israel on July 20, the Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz warned his troops the fighting in Lebanon might continue for "an extended period of time". Isreali ministers made the two-hour drive to Haifa and points north, targets of rocket attacks, to help sustain morale among more than 1m Israelis in the firing line. Although a government spokesperson on July 20 referred to "wall-to-wall backing" for the military offensive in Lebanon, there was concern about the domestic impact of a prolonged conflict or a large commitment of ground forces. But MP Effi Eitam, a former wartime commander, told Israel Radio: "Going inside, with large forces, mainly tanks, is liable to break this fragile consensus". Defence Minister Amir Peretz said on a visit to the north: "If the conclusion is a diplomatic one, we will demand all the guarantees to ensure we won't return to the situation we were in on the eve of this operation". Coupling events in Lebanon with the army's continuing offensive in the Palestinian territories, Gen Halutz said: "The terrorist groups misread the map and misinterpreted the resolve of Israeli society and the IDF".

However, 10 days into the conflict on July 21, the campaign was going slower than expected by some Israelis and there has been little let-up in the bombardment on communities in the north. They suffered the worst barrages on July 19 despite.

Iran's chief nuclear negotiator and head of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), Ali Larijani, on July 20 accused the US of trying to prevent a negotiated solution to the stand-off over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. In a statement read out on state TV, Larijani said Iran needed to produce nuclear fuel "inside the country" for 20,000 MW of electricity in the next 20 years. He said Iran would reply by Aug. 22 to an incentive package offered by the five permanent members of the UNSC plus Germany (P5+1) in an attempt to persuade Tehran to curb its nuclear programme.

Tehran has welcomed the package as a basis for talks but says will not accept the precondition that it first suspend all uranium enrichment. UNSC members have been negotiating in New York on how they might make the suspension mandatory on Iran, but Russia and China have continued to voice opposition to the exertion of untimely pressure. Larijani warned: "if the path of confrontation is chosen instead of the path of dialogue...and Iran's definite rights are threatened, then there will be no option for Iran but to reconsider its nuclear policies". Some Iranian officials suggest Iran could end UN inspections of its nuclear sites in response to punitive UNSC action. The Israeli onslaught in Lebanon has complicated the issue. The Iranian leadership's suspicion of US motives in backing the P5+1 package may be heightened by Washington's support for Israel's attempt to defeat Hizbullah, Tehran's creation and proxy in Lebanon. Tehran has long suspected Washington is trying to torpedo a negotiated nuclear settlement as a means to overthrow Iran's Shi'ite theocracy.

While popular Iranian reaction to Israel's killing of over 350 Lebanese civilians is so far more muted than in many Arab states, a large demonstration in Tehran on July 19 showed real anger. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the pragmatic former president, attacked Muslim regimes for remaining silent while "the Zionists attack Lebanon with all kinds of modern weapons".

As Israel hits inside Lebanon in a bid to rout Hizbullah, the Shi'ite group is using two weapons to wage war: rockets and TV images of civilian destruction inflicted by Israeli bombs. The latter "weapon", broadcast over the Hizbullah-run TV station al-Manar to pump up Arab sympathies, may in the end be more powerful than Israel's military punch - a counter-punch to Israel's assertion that it can crush Hizbullah by force. Though Israel has eroded the group's ability to inflict harm, Hizbullah may in fact be pleased with the results of the crisis it touched off.

The Christian Science Monitor on July 21 quoted Mark Juergensmeyer, a specialist in "new terrorism" at the University of California at Santa Barbara, "who visited Lebanon just before bombs began to fall", as saying: "Since many terrorist groups are caught up in notions of cosmic war - grand struggles of religious dimensions - they in fact welcome overt warfare since it vindicates their views of the war, a war whose timelines are very long. A siege is exactly what they want - it keeps them motivated".

Military force has successfully eradicated radical groups in the past, but under very different circumstances. The Maoist Shining Path organisation which dominated and terrorised parts of Peru in the 1980s was finally obliterated by relentless search-and-destroy missions and long-term imprisonment of leaders. But perhaps the key factor was not the military campaign but the evolution of South America. Shining Path was doomed by the waning of radical thinking in a decreasingly ideological region. That is not the case in the Middle East, where radical Islam, religious nationalism, and "jihadism" are on the rise - witness the electoral victory of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, Hizbullah's rise through elections to a minority role in the Lebanese government, and the tenacious popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

The Monitor quoted Mahan Abedin, an expert in radical Islamic groups at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence in London, as saying: "Hizbullah is particularly deep-rooted, and the Hamas government [in the Palestinian territories] is a fixture for some time to come, so they have to be seen as factors that are here to stay, at least for the medium to long term". What Israel can accomplish through its military campaign, others say, is a weakening of Hizbullah's ability to strike Israeli territory with missiles and rockets. But even that effort, they add, comes with collateral risks. The Monitor quoted Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. in Arlington, Va., as saying: "Can Israel considerably reduce the threat posed by Hizbullah as a paramilitary group? That it can probably do. But will Israel be able to destroy Hizbullah in terms of its identity, the determination of its leadership, the devotion of its followers, and their dedication to continuing the struggle? No, that's not realistic".

The US has some experience with that reality in its pursuit of al-Qaeda. While cautioning against "lumping together" radical Islamic groups, Jenkins says the US has made progress in undermining al-Qaeda's operational capabilities. On the other hand, he cautions, the US has been less successful at reducing the appeal of al-Qaeda's message, which "continues to radicalize and deepen the zeal of large numbers of young Islamic men". Turning to the US experience in Iraq, Jenkins sees a trajectory which mirrors Israel's, saying: "There is no military challenge in Iraq that can defeat us. But has our presence reduced a radicalization of parts of the population or pacified the country? No it hasn't".

Even if Israel destroys 80% of Hizbullah's arsenal - estimated at more than 12,000 rockets - the supply could be replenished within four months, says Abedin. Iran, Hizbullah's chief supplier, is capable of manufacturing 10,000 rockets a month of the types Hizbullah is using, he says, adding: "The best Israel may be able to achieve is to make it more difficult for Hizbullah to receive the armament and use it in the future". Beyond that, Israel's aim is to "impose on the region its military hegemony, and to impress its enemies. It's showing Iran it is capable of this kind of sustained military campaign". That will not reduce the long-term threat from the Islamist movement opposing Israel. He says: "Whenever the Israelis use disproportionate force they strengthen their enemies and rally popular support [for them]. The fact Israel hasn't learned this lesson, is quite extraordinary".

Jenkins, who has a military background, sees the same dilemma posed by short-term necessities and long-term interests. He says: "Right now, Israel's primary obligation is to end the barrage of rockets and mortars coming into its territory. But they should also understand that accomplishing that will not do much to advance - and can even complicate - what is, after all, a long-term political fight".

For countries facing this challenge, a priority is "to broaden strategies to be far more effective at political warfare", says Jenkins. In some cases "negotiations are in order", he says, noting that the British negotiated with the IRA and the Spanish with the radical Basque group ETA. The Iraqi government is signalling its willingness to talk with part of the insurgency (the more traditionally political opposition, not the al-Qaeda-inspired forces).

In the long run, military campaigns will not be the answer, most analysts agree. Jenkins says: "There may be military battles that have to be fought, but the real answer is to focus more on how to diminish the appeal of the radical message".