Two soldiers were captured by Hezbollah on a border post on July 12. Hezbollah kept telling the world how keen it was to return the soldiers in a prisoner swap.

Hundreds of dead in Lebanon, at least 1,000 severely injured and more than half a million refugees -- all because Israel is not ready to sit down at the negotiating table. We now know from reports in the US media that the Israeli army had been planning such a strike against Lebanon for at least a year.

At least 2,000 Hezbollah rockets have already been fired into Israel while the army's bombardments have so far destroyed a further 2,000 rockets. Northern Israel has already received a fifth of Hezbollah's arsenal. So far some 400 Lebanese civilians are reported dead -- at least a third of them children. From the images coming out of Lebanon's hospitals, many more children have survived but with terrible burns or disabling injuries.

In the latest emerging news from Lebanon, human rights groups are accusing Israel of violating international law and using cluster grenades, which kill indiscriminately. There are reports that Israel has been firing illegal incendiary bombs. The breakdown of the smaller number of deaths of Israelis at the hands of Hezbollah -- 42 -- show that more soldiers have been killed than civilians.
Hezbollah's rockets have been targeted overwhelming at strategic locations: the northern economic hub of Haifa, its satellite towns and the array of military sites across the Galilee.

Hezbollah's fighters are not aliens recently arrived from training camps in Iran. They belong to and are strongly supported by the Shiite community, nearly half Lebanon's population, and many other Lebanese. They have families, friends, and neighbors living alongside them in the country's south and the neighborhoods of Beirut who believe Hezbollah is the best hope of defending their country from Israel's regular onslaughts.

One need only look at the images of the victims of its strikes against residential neighborhoods, cars, ambulances, and factories to see why most of the dead being extracted from the rubble are civilians.

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