FOR a week now, Israeli planes and guns have rained shells and bombs by the thousand on Lebanon in the stated aim of forcing its neighbour to disarm the Hizbollah guerrillas located there.

There is, of course, little virtue in such diplomacy through overwhelming force - even if one accepts Israel's right to defend itself from terrorist attacks.

But what is really taking place is something quite different.

The pressure on Lebanon is a blind for revenge attacks aimed at Hizbollah itself.

Yet they are cruelly futile - for, up to now, not one guerrilla has been killed.

But dozens of innocent civilians have.

Women and children among them.

More have been maimed.

And thousands have been turned into fleeing refugees.

But what is shameful about this retributive terror is that, secretly, the futility of it is accepted by Israel.

For its campaign is really just propaganda for domestic consumption by a government looking for better opinion poll ratings as an election looms. And it is getting them - at the price of the lives of others.

It may be that, having eventually participated in a peace process that not all in Israel approved of, the government was plunged into deep unpopularity at home when extremist enemies of the accords with the Palestinians launched murderous suicide bombings inside Israel and Hizbollah made rocket attacks in the north from inside Lebanon.

But, in responding to the pressure to "do something" and to survive, the Israeli government has given in to the old eye-for-an-eye urge for revenge in spectacular fashion and it disregards the shedding of innocent blood as a means to a short-sighted end.

True, it will all end eventually as international diplomatic intervention defuses the situation.

Indeed the Israeli government, though still waging its bloody show of force, appears ready to let external influence provide it with a get-out.

But having shamelessly rushed for conflict, with its eye on the ballot box, can Israel easily or quickly get back on the path to peace with its neighbours when it has only aped the extremists blocking that path?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.