European Press Review: Will There Be a Victor?

"Israel is stirring up hate in Lebanon and the Arab-Muslim world by destroying the civil infrastructure, killing more children than armed men, unleashing a flood of refugees and announcing that all the Lebanese in the south will be considered supporters of Hezbollah and could therefore die," wrote France's Le Monde on Thursday. "After the shock of Sept. 11, the US fiasco in Iraq and the intensification of the struggle against Jihad fighters, the war in Lebanon is stoking resentment against the Jewish state, its American allies and the West in general. The future will show who the military victor will be. But the first three weeks of the conflict have indicated that there might not be one."

Tony Blair "has made mistakes since the outbreak of the Israel-Lebanon conflict, though they have largely been errors of rhetoric," according to Britain's The Times. Demonstrating greater public concern for the civilian casualties at an earlier stage would have "better served his overall ends," while his delayed expression of regret "appears, however misleadingly, to be secondary." A UN Security Council resolution and the establishment of an international peace-keeping force "would do much to vindicate the prime minister and his position," said the commentary.

Austria's Kurier wrote on Thursday that "without a doubt, Israel is being ruthless in defending its sovereignty. Israel doesn't care about the international opinion and is going up against aggressors with every bit of harshness. It has faired well so far, has survived and forced a formerly hostile neighbor into peace." Lebanon is a country "whose population has suffered more than any other in the Middle East in the past decades. That is not Israel's fault." Iran and its "henchmen" have brought about a "war against Israel's very existence," said the paper, quoting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

"People believed for a long time that the verbal radicalism of Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was some kind of personal idiosyncrasy," wrote Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Wednesday. "It has now even been said that the man has -- to put it politely -- a somewhat bizarre, unpredictable character, such that his dreams of destruction concerning Israel can't be taken quite as seriously as they sound." The paper quoted the Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who had committed his country years ago to supporting Lebanon in its quest to eliminate Israel. "After the country had thawed a bit under President Khatami, the Islamic Republic of Iran has returned to its roots, at least ideologically," said the paper.