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The international community must act

There seems to be little chance of Lebanon's agony coming to an end since the international community is doing nothing to stop Israel from terrorising the people living across its northern border. The United States, the country that can most effectively intervene, would even appear to be encouraging its West Asian ally when it describes as acts of self-defence the grotesquely disproportionate reaction to the abduction of two Israeli soldiers. A plan for the insertion of an international stabilising force into southern Lebanon has been put on hold because Washington wants to give its regional enforcer sufficient time to realise shared objectives. Israel is carrying out its bombing campaign ostensibly to force the Hizbollah to release its soldiers, pressure the militant outfit to pull-back from the border, and provide scope for the Lebanese army to move into the vacated territory and disarm the militia. These objectives cannot be easily attained by military means and the real purpose of the bombardment appears to be the systematic degradation of the Hizbollah's military capabilities. The problem with this approach is that the militant outfit is an integral part of the social fabric in southern Lebanon. It provides essential services to the villages in this area populated mainly by Shias, the community from which its cadres are drawn. A campaign directed at the Hizbollah was always likely to turn into an assault on Lebanon's Shias. That critical point has already been passed with Israel ordering people living in the zone of conflict to evacuate their homes. Israel claims that it has resorted to this tactic in order to create a "sanitized zone." However, its actions in effect target the whole community of Shias and have been particularly brutal.

No parallel can be drawn between the collective punishment that Israel has imposed on the Lebanese people and the damage the Hizbollah has caused with its multiple missile barrages. The militant outfit does deserve to be condemned for causing the deaths of over 15 Israeli civilians through its resort to indiscriminate violence. At the same time it should be noted that the vast majority of the over 300 killed, 1000 wounded and 500,000 displaced on the Lebanese side were also civilians. It is a grim irony that both sides have lost roughly the same number of combatants (a little over two dozen each) after a week of fighting. Israel has also inflicted such staggering damage on its neighbour's economic assets and infrastructure that even those among the Lebanese who had nothing to do with the Hizbollah are likely to undergo prolonged hardship. The international community should not delay initiating a concerted drive to pressure both sides to stop the violence. A ceasefire might not endure unless the Lebanese army or an international force is inserted as a buffer, the Hizbollah disarmed, and a prisoner-exchange arranged. Given the plight of the civilians on both sides, a humanitarian intervention has become absolutely imperative.

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