The massacre of Qana yesterday joins the gruesome catalogue of war atrocities. The death of at least 90 people is an outrage, a war crime against the international community represented by the Fijian Unifil battalion with whom the refugees were taking sanctuary. The massacre will be remembered as a standing rebuke to those who believe war can be turned on and off according to some rational calculus, or that the deaths of so many refugees can be described with the odious phrase "collateral damage". It must galvanise, international pressure to stop the Israeli bombardment forthwith and to retrieve the Middle East peace process from it - and from the Hizbullah bombers.
The Israeli armed forces are some of the best, equipped in the world. They have available to them the most sophisticated satellite and intelligence facilities. They claim to be able to hit individual houses in southern Lebanon with pin point accuracy, using laser guided weapons, radar co ordinates and the most up to date artillery. They are in daily communication with the United Nations personnel in Unifil, are fully aware of its positions and subscribe to the international peacekeeping mandate Unifil enjoys, which prohibits attacks on it. They are also aware that hundreds of refugees have been protected in the Fijian battalion area.
It is extraordinarily difficult to square these facts with the official Israeli claim that the massacre of Qana was unintended. If it was, then the claim of military precision and intelligence falls asunder. Either way it is nonsense to suggest that because Hizbullah rockets were fired from the immediate vicinity of the Fijian position, this somehow justifies the artillery bombardment of the refugees. Pinpoint accuracy should have enabled retaliating shells to hit Hizbullah, or the knowledge of their position should have prevented any endangering of a UN position, before communication was established with it.
There must be the most searching international inquiry into this affair, as to its timing, military conduct and accountability. It cannot be left only to the Israeli authorities to undertake. The authority and legitimacy of international action undertaken through the United Nations are at stake if peacekeeping forces and the refugees under their protection can be attacked with impunity.
The Israeli bombardment must be stopped forthwith. Internationally co ordinated diplomacy must be applied to do so. In this election year in both countries, the United States has taken a markedly pro Israeli line and has supplied that country with the most up to date equipment to fight Hizbullah and Hamas guerrillas. President Clinton must rethink that policy after this atrocity and co operate with European plans for a ceasefire and a return to the 1993 agreement. This weekend in St Petersberg at the Group of Seven summit on nuclear safety, and next week in Brussels, where European Union and other foreign ministers meet to follow up the recent summit in Sharm el Sheikh, opportunities will be presented for co ordinated action. Unless it comes swiftly, the Middle East peace process faces another major setback - not least because this massacre has enormously boosted the popularity of Hizbullah among the southern Lebanese.