A helpful post by Josh Marshall:

All I will say on the final outcome of this is that there won’t be peace on that border or in the region more generally as long as southern Lebanon is controlled by a militia that is not controlled from Beirut, especially one that is supported if not necessarily directed by Iran, and most importantly one that still seeks confrontation with Israel. Our whole state system rests on sovereignty and governments strong enough to exercise it.

There is only one conceiveable way back from the brink here — a multinational force to patrol southern Lebanon, get Hizbullah, or at least its rockets, off the Lebanon-Israeli border and put the region back under the control of the Lebanese central government, first nominally and then, as soon as possible, actually.

Clearly, Beirut is not capable of doing that on her own. Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon would be a disaster for Israel, Lebanon and the entire region. The bad consequences that would flow from that are just too numerous and dire to catalog.

The devil is in the details, of course. How to implement it in a way acceptable to the parties involved? And Marshall has some interesting thoughts about how Bush’s hands off attitude might not be the best one right now…