John Rapley

As effectively the first Arab army to ever fight Israel to a standstill, Hezbollah's star has risen dramatically in the Middle East.

One month later, over a thousand dead, countless more maimed, Lebanon's infrastructure shattered, northern Israel damaged, a million homeless, and what has been accomplished? Those two Israeli soldiers are still in captivity.

If you wanted to argue that violence solves nothing, you could do no better than give this sad example. Yet you can bet your last dollar they'll be back at it again. So it surely seems perverse to even contemplate the thought of winners.

Losers abound, starting with the citizens of Lebanon and northern Israel. Beyond that, though, there are political losers. Obvious candidates are the Israeli government and military. This new government, under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, achieved none of the strategic objectives it set. It had to settle for a rather humiliating exit in which it accepted a scaled-back resolution dependent on United Nations intervention.

For the Israeli military, there is a tradition that anything less than victory is defeat. Deterrence has been a crucial element in Israel's self-defence: the knowledge that nobody has ever defeated an Israeli army on the battlefield, and that the cost of trying is inordinately high, has helped to buy an embattled nation some peace. That is now gone. The decision to try to carry the offensive in the air, and only late to try a somewhat ineffective ground offensive, has prompted harsh criticism within Israel.

As for winners, it is all relative to the destruction. But the biggest winners are probably Hezbollah, Iranian hardliners and possibly the Israeli right.

Biggest victor

Hezbollah is probably the biggest victor. As effectively the first Arab army to ever fight Israel to a standstill, Hezbollah's star has risen dramatically in the Middle East. Now with reconstruction under way, and Hezbollah once again proving itself to be a better service-provider than the Lebanese state, it will only solidify its hold on the south of the country. Within the Lebanese political establishment, it appears to have cemented its place, and on its own terms.

The extent to which one of Hezbollah's principal backers, Iran, was active behind the scenes is unclear. But it certainly played an important role, and the outcome has served the hardliners in Iran's divided political establishment quite well. Those in Tehran, like President Ahmedinejad, who want a more confrontational approach to the West and Israel have felt themselves vindicated by this conflict.

Finally, having been on the defensive for some time, the Israeli right may now find itself with a bit of breathing-space. The Olmert government came to power on a platform of carrying through Ariel Sharon's programme of unilateral disengagement from the occupied Palestinian territories behind a security wall. The right said that would deliver victory to the enemy.

To the extent Hamas and Hezbollah have been able to lob missiles on Israel, kidnap its soldiers and conduct effective military operations from their bases, the rightist argument appears validated. It's probably safe to say that the Israeli policy of disengagement is now dead in the water.

Does that mean we will return to war sooner rather than later? Perhaps, though there may be just one silver glimmer in an otherwise grey cloud. For the first time in a long time, it would appear that the interest in peace may be equal on both sides of the divide. Israel has confronted an enemy that can truly torment it. Yet that enemy has encountered an Israel which can, if not eliminate it, cause it severe pain.

On both sides, there is just the chance that memory may yet enable those who want peace to drown out the militants who are enjoying this fight too much to quit.