AMMAN, Jordan, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Who would have known the Israeli-Lebanese war, now well into its fourth week, would last this long?
Very few would have bet their money on such a long war between a well-organized and mighty Israeli military power, supported by the only superpower, and a group of guerilla fighters in Lebanon, supported by a couple of "rogue" states.
But it entered its 25th day Saturday and many in the Arab world believe if the war ends today, Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah organization would emerge victorious.
Some Arab military pundits say Hezbollah has already won the war, and if a ceasefire is declared today, the group can boast victory.
But, various figures say 730 to 950 Lebanese civilians have been killed by Israeli air strikes since the start of the war and more than 3,000 wounded. About one million, or a quarter of the population, have been displaced from their homes and Lebanon's main roads and bridges have been destroyed.
No independent figures have been released on the number of Hezbollah fighters killed, but the group admitted 43. Israeli officers have privately claimed the killing of 320 guerillas.
On the Israeli side, thousands of Hezbollah rockets fired into the Jewish state killed 30 civilians, including ten Arab-Israelis, while 42 soldiers were killed in direct confrontations in southern Lebanon -- seen as relatively high casualties by Israeli standards. Some estimates put the toll higher, with a total of 75 Israelis, civilians and soldiers, killed. About 2 million residents in northern Israel have been confined to shelters or left the area.
Arab military experts agree while the statistics show a disproportionate war, the harm inflicted on the Israeli military institution and the citizens in the past 25 days by the Lebanese resistance is unprecedented.
What Hezbollah's few thousand fighters with limited weapons have managed to achieve until today, they say, had failed by organized Arab armies combined in previous wars with Israel.
When this war started on July 12 with the capture of two Israeli soldiers and killing of eight others by Hezbollah guerillas in a cross-border operation, many Middle East experts believed Israel could have accomplished its objectives, which continued to change with time, within a few days. After all, it took only six days for the Israeli military to capture the West Bank from Jordan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria in June 1967.
While Israel has repeatedly said it was not interested in re-occupying southern Lebanon, from which it withdrew in May 2000 after a 22-year occupation, it initially said it wanted to retrieve its captured soldiers, and then it claimed it sought to destroy Hezbollah to stop the rockets fired into northern Israel. At a later stage, it said it wanted to disarm the Shiite movement in line with Security Council Resolution 1559, after which Israel sought to distance Hezbollah from the border areas to secure its northern towns from the rockets.
Arab military experts see that Israel's failure to achieve any of its declared and amended objectives after 25 days of relentless Israeli air strikes and attempted ground incursions into Lebanon as a victory in itself.
Israel, they say, has not been able to destroy or weaken Hezbollah's rocket and military strength or stop the barrage of Hezbollah rockets being fired deeper into northern Israel, and it has failed to push the fighters away from southern Lebanon. It has also clearly been unable to hurt the group's leadership or strike its command center and its communication capabilities with the fighters in the battlefields. Plus, the Israelis have not been able to free the two captured soldiers.
Lebanese officials and analysts say Israel's offensive has only achieved killing as many civilians and children as possible, destroying lives and livelihoods, and demolishing the country's infrastructure that took more than a decade to rebuild after the 1975-1990 civil war.
And none of this damage, they insist, has managed to achieve another Israeli objective: Dividing the country that could have added domestic pressure on Hezbollah to yield. After all, only Hezbollah is effectively resisting the Israeli war.
With civilians on both sides paying the price, and as the hostilities don't seem to be meeting real military aims, the political and diplomatic solution will now determine the real victors, if any.
Western countries are trying to agree on a Security Council ceasefire resolution to end the fighting, as the United States and France iron out differences on its content. While Washington wants Israel to remain in southern Lebanon until an international force is deployed at the border and to monitor Lebanon's border with Syria to prevent arms supplies to Hezbollah, France is seeking an immediate ceasefire to be monitored by an expanded version of the U.N. peacekeeping forces already in the area until a new force is ready to take over.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch came to Beirut Saturday for talks with Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri -- who is acting as the main contact between the government and Hezbollah during the war -- to persuade them to accept distancing the guerillas from the frontiers and releasing the captured Israeli soldiers. Or, as Lebanese officials privately said, he came to impose a diluted version of U.S.-Israeli conditions for a ceasefire before he headed to Tel Aviv.
Whatever resolution is endorsed by the Security Council, the warring parties will need to accept the conditions if the fighting is to end. And so far, neither side seems to be ready to accept a ceasefire so long as a common ground does not exist.
Israel insists on continuing its assault until Hezbollah releases the captured prisoners unconditionally and distances the organization from its borders.
Hezbollah, however, said it will not release the soldiers without Israel's release of Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails. The Lebanese government insists on a ceasefire, Israel's pullout from southern Lebanon territories and the return of the displaced to the south.
Hezbollah stressed it will stop firing rockets at Israel as soon as the latter stops its air and ground offensive in Lebanon, and is ready to discuss any political solution thereafter.
Analysts say it is premature to say which side will win the political and diplomatic war. If Israel accepts to halt its offensive, pulls its troops out of Lebanese territories and agrees to hand over the Lebanese prisoners in exchange of its two soldiers, the hostilities might end with a victory claimed by both sides, despite the bloodshed and destruction.
The result of a long-term political solution, however, will determine the ultimate victor.
