WASHINGTON, July 19 (UPI) -- Israel's heavy-handed military response to recent Hezbollah attacks will continue to distance the nation from its ultimate objectives, say Mideast experts.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said Israel will not call a cease-fire until the captured soldiers are freed, rocket attacks come to a halt, and Lebanese troops have been deployed along the country's southern border to disarm Hezbollah militia.
Experts say the Israeli government is trying to use force to turn the Arab world against Hezbollah, but the bombardment is only evoking deeper rage.
"What the Lebanese are feeling... is that the Lebanese state is being dismantled in front of their eyes," said Hisham Milhem, Washington correspondent for the Lebanese daily An-Nahar at a Brookings Institute briefing Monday.
"All the money, all the debts, all the hard work that the Lebanese put in the last 15 years to relieve the country after brutal civil war and foreign interventions and occupations (has been) destroyed in the last five days," he said.
Milhem added that the Lebanese people are not going to criticize Hezbollah when Israel's actions are so reminiscent of the 1982 invasion that resulted in the founding of the Shiite militia.
Martin Indyk, director of Brookings' Saban Center for Middle East Policy, said the unprecedented number of Lebanese casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure works against Israeli objectives.
"The bombing of civilian populations tends over time to turn the anger from Hezbollah for creating this crisis, to Israel for killing them," said Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel.
Arabs are strongly supporting Hezbollah, according to Shibley Telhami, a senior fellow at the Saban Center. "People are looking at this as Hezbollah doing something honorable," Telhami said. "It is reviving a sense of pride in the Arab world."
According to reports, about 230 Lebanese people -- most of them civilians -- have been killed by an Israeli bombing campaign in response to the Hezbollah kidnapping of two of its soldiers one week ago. Thousands of foreigners are now being evacuated from the region.
