Rarely has a war been so foreseeable as the explosion that threatens southern Lebanon this summer. And rarely have the parties involved done so little to prevent it.
When the deputy commander of a UN peacekeeping force - Irish Brig Gen Jim Sreenan, speaking to The Irish Times a week ago - warns that Hizbullah will fight Israel to the border, that Israel will retaliate massively, that civilians will be the victims, in an ordinary world people listen.
But not in Lebanon, where all sides either want to stay out of the conflict (the UN, Europe, the US) or stir things up (Israel, Syria, Hizbullah). The only people really interested in peace, it seems, are the civilians who live in the south. And they, of course, don't count.
Israel could go a long way towards achieving a stable southern Lebanon - surely in its interest - by disbanding its "South Lebanon Army" militia. But it has never been Israeli policy to establish the conditions for peace in this country when it retreats. Before withdrawing from the Chouf mountains in 1983, the Israelis primed their Phalangist allies to fight the Druze. Some of the worst massacres of the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war ensued.
The experience was repeated in Sidon in 1985, when the retreating Israelis again used the Phalange to wreak havoc. The Maronite Catholic militiamen bombarded Sidon from the heights above the city while the Israelis watched.
It is unlikely that the venal, demoralised SLA will fight as hard as the Phalange did. No one wants to be an SLA man these days. Look what happened to Azar Chahla. A Muslim, he left the militia more than a year ago. But on Tuesday three Hizbullah men drove into the central square of his home village of Markaba. With uncovered faces in daylight, they drove straight up to Chahla and shot him dead at close range. Hizbullah announced that it had "carried out the death sentence against the collaborattor Azar Chahla".
The revenge killings that inevitably follow occupation have started. Hizbullah is basking in the glory of being the first Arab army to defeat Israel. Because Syria supports the guerrillas, no Lebanese dare criticise them. Everyone - including UNIFIL - now refers to Hizbullah by the name they chose for themselves: "the Resistance".
The SLA men are also thinking about their leader, Gen Antoine Lahd, and 300 of the militia's mostly Christian officers who have fled to Europe and North America. Gen Lahd sent his family to France years ago, where he has reportedly joined them. Lt Col Chris Moore, the commanding officer of the Irish Battalion of UNIFIL, recently denied a Lebanese newspaper story that SLA men - who have often fired on Irish soldiers - are being granted asylum in Ireland.
"We can think of two we'd take right away", Col Moore said, referring to the men who murdered Irish Privates Derek Smallhorne and Thomas Barrett in 1980 and then fled to Detroit.
Ireland would like to try the killers, but the chances of that happening are remote. Israel's debacle in southern Lebanon is leading to the biggest influx of war criminals in Europe since the break-up of Yugoslavia. Those SLA men left behind by Israel and their own officers will be the biggest losers.
There is something absurd about a ragtag group of two thousand men - not even trusted by the occupiers who employ them - possessing tanks and heavy artillery. The dozens of SLA compounds which scar the southern Lebanese countryside seem to come from a science fiction film: the pyramid inclination of the outer walls, the giant tunnels, big enough for a tank, through which they are entered. The rusted chicken-coop wire that serves as screens from rocket attacks and the equally rusting armour that clutters the approach to the compounds give them the look of intergalactic junkyards.
The weaponry used by Israel in southern Lebanon would seem more appropriate in a "high-tech" Gulf War style conflict than in fighting guerrillas who crawl through wadis at night. But as the Americans learned in Vietnam, it is motivation, not fire power, that wins wars. The victors in southern Lebanon, Hizbullah are hopelessly outgunned by the Israelis. Yet it is the Israelis with the Middle East's most powerful arsenal - including nuclear weapons - who are on the run.
Syria does not want to be seen to oppose the liberation of southern Lebanon or the UN, but the withdrawal creates problems for Damascus. With Israeli forces leaving Lebanon, why does Syria maintain 20,000 troops there seven years after they were scheduled to go? And what purpose do they serve? Under the Syrian-Lebanese "Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation", those 20,000 troops are supposed to defend Lebanon when Israel attacks it.
Damascus did nothing during the July 1993 and April 1996 Israeli offensives. This time, the Israelis want to attack Syrian forces in Lebanon, with unpredictable consequences. Syrian missiles are capable of striking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and there is a real risk of escalation to a full-scale Syrian-Israeli war.
Israel claims that by leaving southern Lebanon, it is complying with UN Security Council resolution 425 - albeit 22 years late. Which raises another awkward question. Why respect 425 and not 242 and 338, which require Israel to leave the Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza Strip?
Because Israelis are being killed in southern Lebanon, not on Golan. The lesson is not lost on the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
