John Kelly - The Man who knows

The ceasefire between Israel and Hisbollah is one of those diplomatic manoeuvres that everyone knows is doomed to failure. Hisbollah have no intention of going away peacefully, Israel are determined to crush them and the UN can't cobble together anything like the size and strength of force required to enforce the deal. The Lebanese Army will be forced to go hunting Hisbollah alone or face a full scale Israeli invasion. Those of us with reasonable memories will recall that the Lebanese Civil War lasted over 25 years and is not long finished.

The Oslo Accords promised peace in the Middle East but were ultimately torn up by the very people who would have benefited most; the Arabs and the Israelis. The rest of the world just can't stop meddling in the Middle East's affairs without every doing any real good. A rational approach would be to allow Israel to use her full military might to crush Hisbollah. Like the US in Vietnam, Israel is handicapped by its leadership's reluctance to strike with full force against Hisbollah regardless of the impact on world opinion.

The Israeli campaign in Lebanon was relatively limited, villages were destroyed and then the Israeli's pulled out leaving Hisbollah to re-occupy the territory and attack Israel again. Guerilla forces thrive on this kind of conflict.

To defeat them Israel needs to occupy Lebanon and impose a police state which has a huge presence in every village and a network of informants loyal to the Israeli cause. A dramatic change in strategy and a massive investment in manpower would be required to achieve this objective. However if the fighting breaks out again, expect an Israeli invasion force to push Hisbollah back north of Beirut with no concern for the casualities.

As for the UN, the Bush Administration has effectively killed it in the same way that Hitler and Mussolini destroyed the League of Nations. By treating the UN as an irrelevance Bush and Co have made the world a dangerous place where any country is fair game for an assault by an envious neighbour.

I suspect that within the next ten years we will be in the grip of a new world order. The sad thing is that the utopian ideals of the UN will not be a part of it. Welcome to a re-run of the nineteenth century, the Age of Empire is back.