inside the glass house

NEW YORK - As the fighting in Lebanon drags into its fourth consecutive week with no UN or international military force to stop the carnage, the US and the 25-member European Union (EU) are at loggerheads. A French proposal for an "immediate cessation of hostilities" has remained grounded at the UN because of US opposition.

The Bush administration obviously wants to provide more leeway for Israel to continue its assault on Hezbollah and its uninhibited destruction of Lebanon. France, which is taking the lead on behalf of the EU, does not want to discuss the creation of a new international peacekeeping force until there is a cease-fire and a political settlement. The US, reflecting the Israeli stand, holds a contrary view demanding a peacekeeping force before a cease-fire. The political merry-go-round goes on and on, as Lebanon continues to burn.

The gap between the US and the EU also seems to be widening. The EU has rejected a request from the Bush administration that Hezbollah be declared "a terrorist organisation." As far as the EU is concerned, Hezbollah is a political organisation with two of its elected members serving as cabinet ministers in the current Lebanese government.

If and when a new stabilization force is created as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah, the proposed force will obviously be predominantly from the European Union. The Israelis doubtless will reject the offer by Arab and Muslim nations to provide troops because of their ideological or religious links to Hezbollah. President Bush, on the other hand, has categorically stated the US will not provide any troops to such an international force.

In the Middle East, the Americans are no longer considered even-handed mediators or honest brokers because of their increasingly one-sided support for Israel — right of wrong. As a result, it is the EU which will dictate terms on the mandate and the strength of the proposed military force. As one EU official said last week: "Bush can say, 'boys let's go'. The only problem is the boys are other countries' boys" — most likely from France, Italy, Finland, Sweden and Poland.

The war in Lebanon has also jeopardised US plans for "a new Middle East" — turning authoritarian regimes and family run-governments into multi-party democracies. The electoral victory of Hamas in Israeli-occupied territories — a party considered a "terrorist organisation" by the US — was one of the first major political setbacks towards the US goal of a democratic Middle East. In Lebanon, the US has been stymied by Hezbollah, in Egypt by the rising political power of the Muslim Brotherhood, and in Iran by the election of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

"I have never seen the United States being so demonised or savaged by Arab commentators and by Arab politicians," says Hisham Melham, the Washington correspondent for Lebanon's An-Nahar newspaper. At a conference at the Brookings Institution last week, he said: "People are clinging to Hezbollah, clinging to Hamas, because they see them as the remaining voices or forces in the Arab world that are resisting what they see as an ongoing hegemonic American-Israeli plan to control the region." But that dream is turning into a US nightmare as Israel continues its rampage in Lebanon and Gaza triggering strong protests from UN organisations and human rights groups.

Last week, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict was constrained to ask the question: How many children will die before the warring parties agree to stop hostilities? Calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities, she said: "The guns must stop firing to give all parties time to reflect on the impact of this war on children and to provide the space necessary for the formulation of a political framework to ensure a more permanent peace." According to UN figures, an estimated 177 children have been killed in Lebanon so far. One third of the approximately 600 injured are also believed to be children. The UN children's agency UNICEF says that 45 per cent of the Lebanese internally displaced are children.

All this has led Human Rights Watch (HRW) to accuse Israel of committing "war crimes" — a serious charge against a UN member state. In a scathing indictment of the Israelis, HRW said last week: "By consistently failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians, Israel has violated one of the most fundamental tenets of the laws of war: the duty to carry out attacks on only military targets."

"The pattern of attacks during the Israeli offensive in Lebanon suggests that the failures cannot be explained or dismissed as mere accidents; the extent of the pattern and the seriousness of the consequences indicate the commission of war crimes," it concluded.

But how many of these charges will stick on a country protected by a superpower? The US was quick to accuse Sudan of "genocide" and "war crimes". But it will certainly not permit any such UN investigations against Israel — a country created, built and nurtured by successive US administrations. The watchdogs may bark but the Israeli-US military caravan moves on.