The time to cease fire

WAR IS THE ultimate sire of unintended consequences. And there is no reason to believe that what has been true of past wars will not be true of the current Mideast war -- a conflict in which Iranian and Syrian missiles fired by the Lebanese Shi'ite militia Hezbollah are landing in Israeli towns while Israel's air force drops bombs not only on Hezbollah positions and weapons but on Lebanon's infrastructure and on the civilian population.

The sooner the bombs and rockets are stopped, the better for all concerned. There are now 500,000 displaced people in Lebanon. There are villages in the south, Christian as well as Shi'ite Muslim, where the populace is cowering in terror, not knowing how they will get milk for their infants and medications for the old and infirm. If Israel's political leaders believe they have anything to gain from continuing the army's campaign in Lebanon to reestablish Israel's degraded deterrence, they have lost track of the need to match the use of military force to the achievement of political aims.

Israel's retaliation against Hezbollah for its July 12 cross-border raid may enable Israel to deter other such violations of an internationally recognized border for some time to come. The Israeli air war could also lead to an eventual agreement to keep Hezbollah's militia posts and rocket launchers several miles away from the border. But if so, the devastation already visited upon Lebanon should be more than enough to achieve what is achievable in the restoration of lost deterrence.

Israel cannot hope to expunge Hezbollah by continued bombing of Lebanon's cities and villages, its power plants, roads, bridges, and airports. Although many Lebanese resent Hezbollah for usurping the powers of making war and peace that only the country's elected government should exercise, and even though Lebanon's Sunni, Druze, and Christian communities may abhor Hezbollah's role as a cats-paw for the regimes in Tehran and Damascus, Hezbollah's roots as a political and religious movement are implanted too deep in Lebanon to be torn up by Israeli bombs.

There are two primary reasons why Hezbollah has gained acceptance, if not respect, outside Lebanon's Shi'ite community (about 40 percent of the population). The first is its reputation for providing social services free of the corruption that taints other Lebanese factions. The second is its posture as resistance fighter against Israel during the Israeli occupation of Lebanon from 1982 to 2000.

This political and psychological reality cannot be ignored or wished away.

It is a commonplace in Israel that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Amir Peretz lack the military background and authority that enabled Ariel Sharon to resist arguments from Israel's army brass about the need to preserve deterrence by avoiding unilateral concessions. Nonetheless, Olmert and Peretz now need to recognize that a continuation of the Israeli bombing campaign in Lebanon, instead of weakening Hezbollah, could have the ultimate effect of strengthening it.

Lebanese who have no regard for Hezbollah's political and social goals are becoming understandably enraged at the suffering and destruction inflicted on them by Israel. No matter how careful Israel's air force may try to be in picking and hitting its targets, the perfectly normal reaction of Lebanese noncombatants who fear for their children is to ask why, if the Israelis want to deter Hezbollah, their bombs are creating a waking nightmare for so much of the Lebanese population.

Rather than turning that population against Hezbollah, prolongation of the air war threatens to unite all of Lebanon's disparate communities in a shared indignation against the country that is killing so many civilians and smashing so much of the infrastructure built since the end of Lebanon's civil war. Although most of those communities might want Hezbollah to disarm in conformity with UN Security Council Resolution 1559, Lebanon's frail government -- which includes two Cabinet ministers from Hezbollah -- is incapable of forcing the Shi'ite militia to disarm. That government, elected last year after a peaceful uprising against Syria's domination of Lebanon, cannot risk provoking another Lebanese civil war by ordering its soldiers or police to take on Hezbollah's fighters.

Israel is certainly not the only party subjected to the law of unintended consequences. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as well as his Iranian and Syrian backers badly miscalculated in launching the July 12 raid into Israel. Hezbollah may survive, but it will now come under tremendous pressure to remove its forces several miles from the internationally recognized border with Israel. There has also been a setback for Syrian ruler Bashar Assad, who shortly before the raid had Nasrallah inform Lebanon's prime minister that Hezbollah would keep peace along the border with Israel only if Assad and his inner circle were assured they would not be arraigned at a UN tribunal for the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Now Assad could face the wrath of other Arab regimes, who view him not merely as a serial bungler, but as an increasingly dangerous ally of Iran. His minority Alawite regime is at risk of being subverted by domestic opponents from Syria's Sunni majority backed by other Arab states. And Iran stands to be the biggest loser of all, having played its Hezbollah card in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Iran's threat of unleashing Hezbollah was meant to deter the United States and its allies from applying too much pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. That card was also supposed to be one of the deterrents against a US attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

If Hezbollah is now kept a safe distance from the Israeli border by an international stabilization force, it will become a broken arrow in Tehran's quiver. But for that to happen, Israel's leaders must have the wisdom to cease firing now, of their own accord, before their bombing of civilians in Lebanon drives potential partners and neutrals into the arms of Israel's implacable enemies.