The war, which can only be described as brutal, has claimed hundreds of lives – mostly Lebanese civilians, a third of whom are children – including some 50 Israelis and four UN peacekeepers.

There is growing concern among international aid agencies about the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who have not received aid in the south of the country. As the conflict between Israel and Lebanon enters its third week, much of southern Lebanon is in ruins and extremely dangerous to either enter or leave.

“There is something fundamentally wrong with the war, where there are more dead children than armed men,” said Jan Egeland, the United Nations undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

The UN has called for a three-day truce between Israel and Hezbollah to allow for aid to enter southern Lebanon and for casualties to be removed. But U.S. President George Bush has again dismissed calls for an immediate truce, arguing instead for an international force to be deployed in Lebanon.

And what of the political solution? 

As the world watches from a backseat, Israel has been granted license to take out civilians, infrastructure, as well as UN observers. Despite reports that the UN had sent 10 notifications during the space of six hours that the Israelis were firing too close to the peacekeepers, there will be no investigation into their deaths. Simultaneously, Israel has continued its time-honored tradition of killing and maiming hundreds of Palestinians, showing no shame in exterminating any number of lives behind the façade of protecting its security.

Predictably, Israel has the backing of Washington. While the U.S. State Department has dismissed as “outrageous” a suggestion by Israel that it has been authorized by the world to continue bombing Lebanon, the U.S. has refrained from calling for a ceasefire, instead rushing delivery of laser-guided precision bombs to Israel. (Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon made the suggestion after powers meeting in Rome refrained from demanding an immediate ceasefire.)

U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice is returning to the region as this issues goes to press. 

While international forces step back from this situation, and with Israel giving no timeline to the end of the fighting, we can only wonder how many more will die. What will be left of Lebanon, and can it recover?

In a moving elegy given at a joint press conference in Rome on July 25, a despairing Prime Minister Fouad Siniora asked whether war-cursed Lebanese were “children of a lesser God.” He added: “We are being pounded day by day, and scores of people are dying every day… The country is being cut to pieces.”