For a Lebanon cease-fire

THE ONE encouraging development in the worsening crisis in southern Lebanon has been the Bush administration's insistence that Israel at least limit its air attacks for 48 hours. Taken in response to the killing of dozens of civilians in Qana, the action showed that the administration has some inkling of how its failure to restrain Israel has been hurting US interests. Now the administration must change course further and work for an unconditional, immediate cease-fire on the part of both Israel and Hezbollah.

Hezbollah is to blame for igniting the current spiral of hostilities by killing eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two others in a cross-border raid. Israel gambled that it could use this provocation to do what the government of Lebanon or the international community should have done long ago -- disarm Hezbollah. If Israel could have done this surgically and quickly, its gamble might have paid off. But Hezbollah has placed its rocket-launchers so unconscionably close to settled areas that Israel's attacks have caused the deaths of hundreds of civilians and destroyed much Lebanese infrastructure, without so far stopping Hezbollah from sending its rockets at Israeli towns, where civilians have also died.

Israel's gamble has not worked, and the Bush administration can best prove its friendship for Israel by insisting that it now agree to a cease-fire. The additional time that Israel wants to attack Hezbollah further could yield more Qanas and, worse, lead to an escalation in violence in the region.

A cease-fire would give international leaders the time they need to agree on a strong stabilization force of UN troops who could assist the Lebanese government in neutralizing Hezbollah and in ensuring that it does not once again pose a threat to Israel. If events of the past three weeks have served any useful purpose, it has been to demonstrate how vulnerable Israel will continue be to rocket attacks from Lebanon, Gaza, and potentially the West Bank if these areas are not stabilized. A cease-fire would provide an opportunity for international pressure on Iran to stop supplying rockets to Hezbollah and on Syria to stop serving as a conduit for them.

In the past, the United States has been instrumental in Mideast peacemaking because its friendship with Israel has not kept Arab nations from seeing it as an honest broker . The danger in this crisis is that the White House endorsement of Israel's continued assault has been until now so uncritical that it could forfeit its influence in bringing all sides to any agreement. A cornered and embattled Israel, an oil-rich Iran willing to finance and arm Hezbollah, and a United States incapable of brokering a peace: These are the elements that could let this crisis spin out of control. A cease-fire would be at least a step back from the abyss.