You remember how quickly the driving out of the Lebanese population from the area south of the Litani and the annexation of the land became 'buffer zone'? Mark how rapidly the 'buffer zone' has become 'civil administration'. See the Jerusalem Post:

Yes, "comprehensive consultations" - now, which of the hundreds of thousands of people they've driven out of their homes in the latest episode of Zionist barbarism do you suppose they'll put the questionnaire to? Is it too late for a referendum on this?

In Israel itself, the very thought that they should Let Lebanon Live is a minority position held by cranks and peaceniks, especially since the hated UN is in town making obsequious pleas and expressing shock that "block after block" of civilian housing has simply been destroyed, blasted to simmering husks. The UN? The UN lets Syria in it, and other evil-doers, and don't they loathe the Jewish State? Is it not, in fact, part of the global conspiracy? As the commenters to this story say, isn't it time to blow up the UN?

So as the brutal destruction of Lebanon continues, Shin Bet warns of a mini-Lebanon in Gaza. This repellent warning comes from the state that tells the media: "don't count the dead", while claiming to have knocked out two rocket launchers in the repeatedly blitzed Tyre which, reporters on the ground have already confirmed, has no rocket launchers because it is too far to the north. This from the state that bombs convoys and fleeing vehicles and destroys main roads to block emergency vehicles while blowing up medicine facilities. Yet more fleeing people wasted. This from the state that drops leaflets on those who are soon to die, warning them that they must stay away from houses used to store weapons (in Gaza) and rocket installations (in Lebanon) or they will be bombed. There is already Lebanon in Gaza, and already Gaza in Lebanon.

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A case study in self-deception: Nick Cohen in today's Observer moaning about the demise of 'interventionism'. He wonders why liberals do not wish to send troops from surrounding countries, from the UK and US to Lebanon under UN auspices to "separate the two sides". He adds that there is a "powerful argument" from the Zionists, whom he once abhorred, that says that if they withdraw from occupied territory, it will be used by Hamas and Hezbollah to launch rocket attacks. Surely therefore and international force could sort them out and provide the model for a withdrawal from Gaza "in safety".

This is a curious sequence of arguments (I speak in the broadest possible terms): Israel attacks Lebanon so we must "separate the two sides" rather than stop providing financial, military and diplomatic support for one side; Israel claims it will be attacked if it ceases marauding and murdering and thieving in territories it occupies, as if rocket attacks from Hezbollah and Palestinian groups were not a response to Israeli crimes, and so since Israel must be right, Israel's backers must step in to secure those areas for it. One could spend hours picking apart the ideological knots that Cohen has tied himself up into, but I have some better things to do and no desire to free him from his self-imposed bondage. However, it is worth noting: 1) the extraoardinary lengths of circumlocution to which Cohen will go in order to avoid the reality that this is interventionism. Craig Murray, who has sat across a table from Cohen once or twice in the past, writes that British diplomats are working overtime to prevent a ceasefire - they are intervening, in other words, to ensure Israel's destruction of Lebanon continues; 2) the pungent racism involved, in which imperialist states must, instead of ceasing to engage in imperialism, instead of ceasing to prop up local bullies and thugs as extensions of their power, 'intervene' to suppress the inherent barbarism of the Middle East. Cohen reminds us of the multinational force that was driven out of Lebanon by Hezbollah and bemoans the fact that few international forces would want to go in and face that again, but the thought of what those forces did and why the Lebanese did not wish to be occupied by a multilateral mission force simply doesn't occur to him; 3) the deep trauma of Iraq in Cohen's conscience. Evidently at some loss to say something good about the occupation, he babbles about Iraqi democrats (by which he means the occupation's supporters), and avers that the reason no one will 'intervene' here is because of Iraq, and the awful stigma of mass murder, torture, rape, US death squads and so on that antiwar protesters have conferred on it. In Cohen's imagination, "Generals" resile from combat if Al Qaeda are involved, while "liberals" are insufficiently apprised of the threat of "barbarism" and too much apprised of the threat of Bushism. To put it another way, Generals are too soft to like smacking foreigners around any more, because they're too scared of Al Qaeda, and liberals are too soft to smack them around because they're too scared of Bush. If only the military men weren't so chicken shit and the antiwar protesters weren't so, well, antiwar, then all would be well in Palestine.