First of two parts

After eight days, the violence on the Lebanese-Israeli front continues with no end in sight. Hundreds of civilians have been killed on both sides, and the rhetoric continues from both directions. Unfortunately, in the case of the Middle East, one person’s hero is another’s terrorist, and one side’s martyr is another side’s score.

Hezbollah, in Israel’s eye, is a terrorist organization par excellence. Remember TWA? The Beirut Marines’ headquarters bombing? The hostages? Their leader looks exactly like those Iranian ayatollahs, the same ones who are trying to acquire nuclear weapons to annihilate Israel.

Drive north from Naharia, Israel, and before you shift into fifth gear, you hit Nakoura, Lebanon. There, Hezbollah has massive popular backing. It commands a major bloc in the Lebanese parliament, elected last year. Hezbollah is also a major player in the Lebanese cabinet, the same one our American officials are so eager not to weaken.

Let’s not forget how Hezbollah’s resistance in the south made Israel in 2000 withdraw from South Lebanon, occupied in 1982. This was the first time in the history of the Arab-Israeli struggle that Israel withdrew from an occupied territory with no peace treaty and no political concessions.

Fast forward to 2006. Israel continues to hold 8,000 Arab political prisoners; hundreds of these are women and children less than 16. Israel continues to occupy portions of land in Lebanon’s Sheba’a farms, Syria’s Golan Heights and the West Bank and Gaza, thought to be the backbone of any future Palestinian state. The U.N. secretary-general’s personal representative in Lebanon, Gerd Peterson, keeps an extensive database of Israeli sea, land and air incursions into Lebanon. While the United Nations, with U.S. backing, was busy trying to link Syria to recent political assassinations in Lebanon, our ambassador in Beirut was dumbfounded when an Israeli Mossad ring was indicted in yet another political assassination in South Lebanon.

Fast forward to July 12. Hezbollah, after multiple failed attempts, captures Israeli soldiers. The secretary- general, Hassan Nasrallah, immediately goes on every single TV screen discussing how he is only interested in a swap with Israel. Make a U-turn back to the upper Galilee, Israel. Enough is enough, said their army’s commander in chief.

Is it a coincidence that this happens four days before the G8 summit is meeting to discuss Iranian nuclear weapon programs? Not really, said their prime minister. The link was easy. Let’s hit them hard, said their defense minister. After all, this would be a good opportunity to prove wrong all the people who originally accused him of being “soft on Arabs.”

So Israel goes on to “defend itself.” Operation “Summer Rain” starts. The Lebanese airport is bombed. The EMS headquarters in south Lebanon is destroyed. Cell phone towers are gunned. F16, tanks, artillery and warships take turns bringing down every bridge possible. Hezbollah fires back. The number of Lebanese to Israeli dead was 20 to 1, more than 300 at this point.

On “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked if she would go to the Middle East to get a cease-fire. She did not seem in a hurry. Getting the “right context for a cease-fire” is more important. In the Middle East, where any outcome would reflect the balance of power at that instant in time, the Hebrew translation of her interview was: keep bombing, until you take care of the “root cause of the problem.”

Well, now we’re getting somewhere. What is the “root cause of the problem”? In Tel Aviv, they think anybody who sneezes in Damascus is trying to annihilate Israel. One does not know if the Israelis really believe this, or the world is really gullible, it believes them. Let’s put it this way. It is easier for this writer to be richer than Bill Gates, shoot better than Michael Jordan and be more handsome than Brad Pitt, by tomorrow morning, than for whatever group of Arabs to think of ever becoming able to annihilate Israel. This rhetoric simply does not have any credibility anymore on either side.

In their last summit in Beirut, all Arab heads of state presented an initiative to Israel. Full peace, full security of Israel, full normalization of relations with the Jewish state, for, get this, withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Israeli cabinet never responded. Everybody in the world knows that such an outcome is the only way the conflict could ever end. The problem is, the two sides are so skeptical of each other (or is this an understatement?) to proceed. So what do we do?

It is time for our administration, the American administration, to step up. We already have the might. Do we have the will? And will we work hard to get the credibility on both sides?

Only that will take care of the “root cause” problem. “Summer Rain,” I think not. After all, summers in Israel and Lebanon are too hot for that. Only a Nor’easter of American diplomacy willing, ready and able to impose a two-state solution, according to applicable U.N. resolutions, will be able to cool it off.

Wassim Mazraany, M.D., of Hampden, is a surgeon at Eastern Maine Medical Center and Sebasticook Valley Hospital. He is a native of Lebanon. His wife, a native of Hamilton, N.Y., and 3-year-old daughter are currently in Houla, Lebanon, a half-mile from the border with Israel.