(AP)

Premeditated murder....

In his incomparably thorough fashion, George Monbiot details the cross-border squabbling between Hezbollah and Israel that proceeded Israel's recent invasion and murder of more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians, the dislocation of a quarter of the country’s population, and the ongoing destruction of its entire infrastructure.

While Hezbollah had reason to believe their murder of three Israeli soldiers and abduction of two more on July 12th would be just another in the chain of preceding events resulting in little or no further bloodshed, Israel was actually poised and waiting for an excuse to go into Lebanon with full force.

...On July 12, in other words, Hizbullah fired the first shots. But that act of aggression was simply one instance in a long sequence of small incursions and attacks over the past six years by both sides. So why was the Israeli response so different from all that preceded it? The answer is that it was not a reaction to the events of that day. The assault had been planned for months.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that "more than a year ago, a senior Israeli army officer began giving PowerPoint presentations, on an off-the-record basis, to US and other diplomats, journalists and thinktanks, setting out the plan for the current operation in revealing detail". The attack, he said, would last for three weeks. It would begin with bombing and culminate in a ground invasion. Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the paper that "of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared ... By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we're seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it's been simulated and rehearsed across the board".

I still seriously wonder if the July 12th episode itself was not deliberately provoked by Israel. In my experience, the Israeli military does not typically make tactical errors like exposing a vulnerable patrol to ambush along the border.

In any case, I believe Hezbollah's fierce resistance has stunned Israel.

Complete column here.