This would be a disaster, the US strategy is to blackmail the Lebanese government into agreeing to an occupation of southern Lebanon by foreign troops, whose mission would be to crush Hizbullah. But the US has overplayed its hand, its Israeli pawns have proved shockingly incompetent and lacking in finesse. Carried away with the size of the toys the Americans have given them, they have engaged in an orgy of senseless murder and destruction. But seem to have hardly laid a glove on Hizbollah.
The strategy of Hizbullah is quite interesting. At first I thought they were as deranged as the Israelis, firing missiles aimlessly over the border, in what seemed a completely impotent gesture. That sort of behaviour is practically an admission of defeat.
But it seems there might have been method to their madness after all. It appears the missiles were not a futile gesture, but a deliberate strategic provocation, designed to force the Israelis to come out from behind their hi-tech battlements. In other words, to draw them into an invasion of Lebanon, where Hezbullah was waiting in ambush. A cunning strategy. Israel has to invade to stop the rocket attacks, because bombing hasn't worked. Yet they know that this exactly what their enemy wants and has prepared for.
Sending in foreign troops instead sounds like a great idea no doubt, although it must seem like a long shot that any foreign governments would agree. Even Australian Foreign Minister Downer described it as a "suicide mission" a few days ago, and he isn't the brightest star in the sky. Like they say, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. There won't be any foreign occupation of Lebanon unless Hizbullah is crushed and it doesn't look as though the Israelis are up to the job of crushing them.
Bombing civilians and infrastructure hasn't worked, it has just made a lot more Lebanese mad as hell. As it always does. The Israelis seem reluctant to pay the price of going up against well entrenched and motivated ground troops. I guess they have become a bit soft, having trained for shooting unarmed civilians, people who shoot back are not their cup of tea. What a mess.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
Rice hops on diplomatic shuttle
Paul McGeough Chief Correspondent in Baalbeck, Lebanon Sydney Morning Herald July 31, 2006
ANALYSIS
The top end of the Bekaa Valley is a long way from the horror on Lebanon's southern border - but the Israeli jets came calling.
Splat on the Syrian border, the valley used to be the granary of Rome; more recently it dispensed heroin for the addicts of Europe. Today, its fertile flats provide breakfast for Beirutis and cadres for Hezbollah. The Islamic militia's first crop of leaders came from the Bekaa and they trained their first guerrilla fighters in the creases of its rugged walls.
Towns and villages up and down the valley are decked in the yellow flags that bear the Hezbollah logo - a raised AK-47. Mosques and power-poles are festooned with posters of its leader - Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.
In Baalbeck, the regional conflict is reduced to two adornments. By the main road into town an Israeli tank captured in the 1980s has been hoisted onto a slender plinth; the sign on a model of the Al-Aksa mosque on a traffic roundabout is sign-posted: "Jerusalem, capital on earth, capital in heaven."
The mayor has gone public, denying that Hezbollah fighters or weapons are stationed here. But a few armed men lurk in the shadows and others - in civilian clothes - move in to shepherd the Herald/Age away from some of the bombed out buildings.
But for all that, Israel's target selection out here seems to confirm the charge that its response to Hezbollah's abduction of two of its soldiers was 'disproportionate' and that it does amount to 'collective punishment'.
In strict military terms, the bombing of Hezbollah's community welfare office in the centre of town might have been justified - who knows who might have been meeting inn the basement. At a stretch, taking out five of the Baalbeck's service stations makes military sense - guerrillas need petrol to get to the front.
But why did they come back the next day to demolish a four-story supermarket adjacent to the welfare office - even if it was a part of Hezbollah's extensive corporate network?
And what, other than the collective punishment of the local population, was the reason for incinerating at least four factories which are among valley's biggest employers?
At the Indian-owned Maliban glass-bottle plant the fires are out and so too are 500 workers who have been denied their wages. Amidst the twisted steel and mountains of broken glass, plant-operator Houssam Amer (32) surveyed the mangled remains of six new $US8 million production lines and muttered to himself: "They have taken the bread from our tables".
Fields and roads are deserted, but the manager of the nearby Candia dairy plant, Dr Osama Dimassi (31), stood in the rubble of his $US25 million, high-tech factory, struggling for an explanation.
"There is none ..." and he paused. "Yes there is - they want to hit the whole economy".
Almost 300 families depended on the Candia payroll. Now, two weeks after the attack, stocks of sugar and plastic still smoulder amid collapsed concrete beams that snapped like spaghetti. And a carpet of flies hovers over his souring produce.
Dimassi's senior management team fall in beside him for a tour of what used to be their pasteurising plant, the cheese rooms and the fruit-juice packing area. Asked if they were Hezbollah supporters, three of them answer in unison: "No - we're Communists!"
Against the backdrop of Baalbeck's stunning Roman ruins, local Hezbollah MP Nawwar Al-Saheli was contemptuous: "They claim they are enforcing United Nations resolution 1559. Who do they think they are - the military wing of the UN?" And Khalil Abbas, an idle ruins tourist guide was unambiguous: "They can bomb - but they cannot tell us what to do".
So who will tell who what to do?
Both sides were spoiling for this fight. Their battle plans were ready and the trigger was Hezbollah's abduction of two Israeli soldiers on July 12. But in terms of winners and losers, this war is far more difficult that the Israeli generals expected.
They sent their ground forces into Lebanon to create a protective buffer zone. But Hezbollah keeps firing its missiles into Israel at about 100 a day and while the Israelis took the village of Maroun Al-Res last weekend, they spent most of the last week trying to take another - Bint Jbeil - and failed.
On Saturday they withdrew from the town.
Major General Udi Adam, the head of the Israeli Northern Command, confirmed that his troops were still fighting around Bint Jbeil, but his explanation for the withdrawal was at odds with all that Israel had been saying for weeks: "We didn't intend to capture Bint Jbeil. The objective still is to destroy as many infrastructures and terrorists in the area as possible. Bint Jbeil is pretty much in ruins."
Despite the drum beat of Israeli's rhetoric, persistent reports from Washington and from reporters travelling with Rice indicate that her plan for a settlement contains many of the elements that Israel has rejected since the fighting began.
A draft resolution that is expected to go before the United Nations Security Council early this week calls for up to 20 000 foreign troops to be deployed on Lebanon's borders with Israel and Syria and for Beirut's weak and sectarian-divided military forces to be stationed with them.
But Israel no longer is insisting on the immediate disarming of Hezbollah and the BBC is quoting senior Israeli officials saying that they would accept a ceasefire as soon as such a UN resolution was carried, rather than boxing for the weeks that it is likely to take to assemble and position such a force.
Other Israeli immutables also appear to be on the table. The draft is said to include a prisoner exchange - the two Israeli soldiers for four Lebanese held by the Israelis; and for Israel to return control of the disputed Shebaa Farms district to Beirut.
Rice appears to have had a reality check in the days after her grand announcement last week that this was to be the birth of a new Middle East.
The grievances, non-negotiable demands, bitter resentments, fluid alliances, religious fanaticism and enough weapons for several wars that stymied her predecessors are all in stark relief - as they always have been.
Washington Post commentator Eugene Robinson asked in disbelief on Friday: "Does Rice envision that in her "new" Middle East, Palestinians will somehow develop amnesia and forget their aspirations for a viable independent state?
"Does she believe the autocrats in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere will allow free and fair elections -- and that voters will reject the militant faith-based factions that for years have been providing needed services that corrupt governments can't be bothered with? Does she think anyone is going to see the uncontrollable Frankenstein's monster we created in Iraq as a model to emulate?"
Warren Christopher, one of her predecessors during the Clinton years, also tried to bring Rice down to earth, writing: "[Her plan] is achievable, if at all, only after protracted negotiations involving multiple parties.
"In the meantime, civilians will continue to die, precious infrastructure will continue to be destroyed and the fragile Lebanese democracy will continue to erode. Because Hezbollah has positioned itself as the "David" in this war, every day that the killing continues burnishes its reputation within the Arab world.
"Every day that more of the Lebanese infrastructure is turned to dust, Beirut's fragile democracy becomes weaker, both in its ability to function and in the eyes of its people."
Washington's Sunni allies in the region - Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan - understand all this. They are now on the run in the face of a shellacking they are getting from their media and their people for seeming to have indicated to Washington that it would be good sport to unleash the Israeli Defence Forces on the Shiite militia in Lebanon.
So life in the Middle East goes on as it always has.
In the Bekaa Valley, the factory guards still come to work - even though there is only rubble and embers to secure. And the tour guides still show up at the Roman ruins in Baalbeck - even though there is not a tourist in sight.
And Condoleezza Rice has done what others in her shoes have always had to do - jump aboard the diplomatic shuttle. After years of the Bush White House's sneering at the peripatetic efforts of her predecessors to hose down conflict in the region, she was back here yesterday.
That's twice in the one week. That's a shuttle.