The only practical solution

When the time comes to analyze how the 2006 Lebanon war became politically and morally bogged down, the answer is likely to be: From the moment it was decided, officially or in practice, to try to eliminate Hezbollah. This was the moment that the battle cry of the ranters and ravers became national policy.

Hezbollah as a military force is an aggressive terror organization. It lost its raison d'etre when Israel withdrew from Lebanon. The weapons it accumulated, thousands of inaccurate missiles, are premeditatedly intended to strike at innocent civilians as their principal targets. The organization operates under the auspices of a Shi'ite-Muslim revolution lead by Iran, which is seriously calling for the annihilation of Israel. It is given a free hand by the Lebanese government, which is renouncing its responsibility for its sovereign territory and is thus responsible for its actions.

The response to the attack in which the soldiers were abducted should have been a restricted military action directed mainly at influencing the Lebanese government and the West. The aim should have been to get an international force willing to fight into south Lebanon and thus prepare the ground for the Lebanese Army to take control.

This purpose alone, not physically annihilating Hezbollah, should have guided Israel's every act. It justified no more than a limited military action, including striking at Lebanese government installations and property, combined with a worldwide political campaign. Israel held the best cards to conduct such a campaign: UN resolutions, international legitimacy, the understanding and desire to neutralize Hezbollah (even in France, and in most Arab states). These assets could have been realized, and Israel should have invested its main efforts in doing so.

Instead, the attempt until this week to physically destroy Hezbollah dragged Israel into a questionably justified, immoral, unwise and very dangerous war.

A questionably justified war because because when the response to localized aggression becomes an all-out war that causes mass killings and suffering and threatens to set the entire region on fire, it deviates from its appropriate proportions as well as the reason justifying it.

Immoral - because it is impossible to physically destroy a violent organization operating in the midst of civilian population. Granted, its strategy is loathsome, but as difficult and annoying as it is to admit, it is also effective. According to the moral norms of our culture and of international law, it is prohibited to fight terror or guerrilla organizations by means of the mass killing of civilians. The attempt to destroy Hezbollah led to such killing because it cannot be carried out in any other way. It raised the threshold of killing and attacking innocent civilians beyond a tolerable limit and inevitably reduced the army's sensitivity (and the air force's in particular) to civilian losses. It reduced the active intent to avoid these losses - a vital condition for a just war. The difference is measured in hundreds of fatalities, thousands of wounded, and extreme suffering to civilians.

An unwise war - because all is being done for a purpose that cannot be attained. The Israel Defense Forces cannot return to Lebanon; this we already know from experience. Hezbollah cannot be eliminated without an "ethnic cleansing," which is a war crime. In view of this, such a goal must fail, and Hezbollah will appear as the winning party. The modification of the war's goals in the last few days - the call to weaken Hezbollah to a great extent - will not help. To the contrary, the path Israel has taken thus far has already led to Hezbollah's legitimization in Lebanon and to huge solidarity for it among the Arab states.

In the absence of an effective international force, Hezbollah's fighters will return with a higher morale, and they will rehabilitate their units and weapons. The organization's prestige will increase and Israel's deterrent power, which has already been struck a blow, will suffer even more. Moreover, Hezbollah may become the leading political power in Lebanon, like Hamas in the Palestinian Authority.

But there is still a way out: End the violence in keeping with an agreement with world leaders on the establishment of an international force that will accompany the Lebanese Army to the border and help it assume responsibility. There is a broad international understanding for such a move and justification for it is already inherent in existing UN resolutions.

The Americans, French, Tony Blair, Javier Solana (European Union) are especially interested in this, as are the moderate Arab states, even if their public statements have changed.

Such a force, which must have combat capabilities, will help to cure the "Lebanese disease" - the anarchy in the south - that has been causing Israel grief since the 1970s, and could also bring about the shackling or neutralization of Hezbollah and Iran on Israel's border.

The disadvantages, and they exist, shrink in view of the fact that this is the only practical solution. One can only hope that the government, which has changed the definition of its objectives, will now stick only to this goal, and will divert all its efforts and resources, including the military ones, exclusively to this end.