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Soldiers of an army of occupation are legitimate targets for resistance fighters. It’s akin to conquistadors moaning about the dangerous natives to suggest otherwise. Hezbollah and Hamas’s capture of Israeli soldiers does not then excuse or explain the Israeli military’s latest attacks on civilian populations. Anyway Israel continues to ignore a clear offer of negotiations for the exchange of captured soldiers for political prisoners.

When the Israeli military targets civilians and the infrastructure of life - including schools, housing, roads, and water pipes - it commits crimes against humanity. When Israeli bombs target Lebanese army outposts and barracks, including twenty Lebanese soldiers killed in two strikes in as many days, it becomes clear the regional superpower desires a continuation of hostilities: Israel is not only ignoring Lebanon’s sovereign right to control its own security but also thwarting Lebanon’s ability to do so.

Even prior to Israel’s latest invasion of Lebanon, Israeli jets habitually violated Lebanese air space. Add to this the ongoing occupation of the Shebaa Farms, Israel knowingly provokes its northern neighbour and keeps open the battlefront on its northern border.

During the latest hostilities, Israel has been able to lay siege to and close off Lebanon. The international community has pretty much left Lebanon, like the Occupied Territories, to its fate. Backed by the UK, the US demonstrated tacit support for Israel’s war on Lebanon when it blocked UN Security Council efforts to implement an immediate ceasefire.

Israel has threatened to bomb Lebanon “back 20 years.” This last happened in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon intent on burying the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). Then Israel pushed the retreating PLO and civilians from south Lebanon back into west Beirut, where Israel subsequently slaughtered some 17,500 people from the air.

The international forces subsequently oversaw the implementation of Israel’s request that the PLO (and Syrian forces) be evacuated. Once completely devoid of the power of resistance, Israel invaded west Beirut and oversaw the Sabra and Shatila massacre of the elderly, women, youth, and children by Israel’s allies since 1976, the Phalangist militia.

This bloody history lives on in memory and extends into today. On Saturday 15 July, the Israeli army ordered civilians out of Marwaheen saying it would bomb the village in two hours. The Israeli army then fired upon vehicles, which it knew, because it ordered it, contained precious loads of whole families trying to escape the line of fire. A strike against two vehicles left at least twenty civilians dead, mostly children.

In 1982, the thousands of civilian victims of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing where labelled “human shields” for the PLO. It remains largely acceptable to normalise Israeli brutality and condemn Palestinians without proof. Actress and Guardian columnist, Maureen Lipman, for example, went unchallenged by presenter of the BBC’s This Week programme, Andrew Neil, when she made the following gross generalisation:

“What’s proportion got to do with it? It’s not about proportion, is it? Human life is not cheap to the Israelis. And human life on the other side is quite cheap actually because they strap bombs to people and send them to blow themselves up.”

When asked whether Hezbollah would accept giving back the two soldiers they hold captive, Shaikh Hassan Nasrallah replied they would like the Lebanese Government to negotiate on their behalf. In the end it is the world leaders and their advisors who have miscalculated.

The day before the capture of Corporal Gilad Shalit, al-Jazeera reported Israel’s abduction of two civilians from Gaza. They are the brothers Osama and Mustafa Abu Muamar, and their fate remains at this time unknown. Their abduction, while not reported in the commercial mass media, is an inciting event too.

Hezbollah was a homegrown response to Israel’s 18-year occupation of south Lebanon, ending in 2000. The Hamas-led government was democratically elected into office. Their origins in popular support share a common cause: The need to defend the indigenous populations against the ambitions of the only country in the world to have never had internationally declared borders.