Israel's twin wars, one in Lebanon and the other in the Gaza Strip, are a disaster, not only for their civilian victims but also for Israel itself, as well as for the United States, and the chief cheerleader for both, Stephen Harper.

The images of the air war on Lebanon are by now etched on the world's conscience: civilians ordered out of their villages stranded on bombed-out roads or being bombed themselves; medical and relief convoys hit; UN peacekeepers, including a Canadian, killed; highways littered with the dead, and hospitals bursting with bloodied children and people with limbs torn off.

Israel says it does not target civilians and that civilian casualties are sometimes unavoidable since Hezbollah hides arms among civilians, which it does — "cowardly blending," as Jan Egeland, UN's emergency relief co-ordinator, called it. But the dead are dead, by a ratio of about 10 Lebanese to 1 Israeli.

This prompted UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to call for "a far greater and more credible effort by Israel to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure."

For all its ferocity, the air war failed to decimate the terrorist Hezbollah, while bringing down much criticism on Israel.

Those condemning it, in the same breath as Hezbollah, include the International Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the European Union, and such Jewish intellectuals as veteran Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery and Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, the liberal American magazine, who said Israel has "crossed a moral boundary."

Hezbollah can still rain down rockets on Israel. Worse, its stature is growing. So is the regional influence of its two benefactors, Iran and Syria.

Even in Lebanon, those who have been critical of Hezbollah are angrier at Israel.

Given the limitations of the air mission, the Israeli cabinet gave the go-ahead to ground troops to move into Lebanon, says professor Janice Stein, director of the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto.

"The military originally wanted a ground offensive to remove the [Hezbollah] rocket launchers but, because of the traumatic precedent of Lebanon [the 1982-2000 occupation], the government refused.

"Only when it became transparently clear that an air war cannot succeed, the government shifted very reluctantly to the military's preferred strategy."

Israel has also given up its objection — initially backed by George W. Bush and Prime Minister Harper — to the deployment of an international force.

In Gaza, violence and collective punishment continue. The UN's Egeland characterized the Israeli offensive in response to the June abduction of a soldier as "a disproportionate use of force."

Human rights groups have said that the bombing of the power plant and other infrastructure has multiplied the misery of civilians already reeling from months of financial sanctions, initiated by Canada, as punishment for electing Hamas.

The result, predictably, is that pro-US moderates such as President Mahmoud Abbas are as sidelined there as Prime Minister Fouad Siniora is in Lebanon.

Does all this make any sense?

Stein: "I think it is a calculated kind of madness, born out of the frustration that unilateral disengagement has been exploded by what Hamas and Hezbollah have done and that a negotiated solution is not a solution anymore.

"In a world where rational solutions are disappearing, the only rational strategy may be to convince everybody in the neighbourhood that you are irrational and will hit back hard."

Professor James Reilly, another University of Toronto expert on the Middle East who has just stepped down as head of the department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations, offers this perspective:

"There may be some conviction on the part of Israel and the United States that if you hit the Arabs hard enough, and repeatedly, Israel will ultimately achieve its political goals in the region. If that's the logic, it's flawed logic ...

"The dependence on the use of superior military force by Israel and the US to address their political problems in the region only creates more political problems."

He raises another dichotomy: "The United States and Israel have decided to raise the stakes by making an issue of not just the Lebanese border but of who's in charge — Iran and Syria or the United States and Israel?

"They are making demands of Hezbollah and Hamas and also of Iran and Syria to behave in certain ways but they are not in any position to influence them to behave in certain ways."

Both Stein and Reilly said the prospect for peace has been dealt a death blow.

As for Harper's stance, Reilly said it's too early to know "the implications for Canada emerging as a junior partner of the United States," except that "the US is making so many enemies that Canada may be making some as well, unnecessarily."

Stein said that Harper, having so strongly supported Israel's right to self-defense, must help "develop a meaningful military option along the Lebanese border, whether it is a NATO force or a UN force."

"He has to recognize, as even the Israeli government has recognized, that self-defense alone will not accomplish its strategic purpose and there must be some international presence to break the deadlock."

To resist such a force, as Harper seems to, is "a contradiction of the consequences of his earlier position."

Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday and Sunday. Email to: hsiddiq@thestar.ca.

© 2006 Toronto Star Newspapers Limited

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