When Israel last went into Lebanon in force in April 1996 with the intention of crushing Hizbollah, it managed to kill precisely two members of the Shia Islamist militia in the course of a 17-day bombardment that killed a lot of civilians and turned the country into a refugee camp. This time things are going much faster.

After 10 days of shelling and rocketing, the Israeli armed forces have killed about three times as many civilians, razed whole villages and suburbs of Shia Lebanon - in the south, in south Beirut and the northern Bekaa valley - attacked Christian and Sunni areas as well, and have still barely laid a glove on Hizbollah.