Like any other experience, good or bad, wars have brought along with them valuable lessons for those involved. The war on Lebanon, which lasted over a month and which claimed the lives of over 1,000 Lebanese, can definitely be categorized as such.

The tricky thing with wars is that they take such a heavy human and material toll, the most valuable and obvious lessons are often overlooked. Hizbullah, a guerilla organization armed with a primitive arsenal of weapons and a conviction and determination made of steel, is still standing after 32 days of merciless Israeli military pounding. Israel has slaughtered, not only Hizbullah fighters in battle, but scores of innocents – men, women, children in their beds – and still, it could not be defeated.

This is a lesson for us all. From this day forward, Hizbullah has proven that it is a force to be reckoned with and that when it promises, it delivers. Oppressed peoples around the world have seen their national aspirations, their will to stand up to their oppressors, mirrored in the resolve of Hizbullah and its resistance.

Still, there are some lessons that we have known all along but which were magnified tenfold by this war. The Palestinians and the Lebanese will never make the mistake of believing their Arab brethren perched on the tainted seats of their corrupt regimes, will ever rise to the occasion and stand beside them.

Israel’s war of aggression against Lebanon has shamefully exposed just how low some Arab leaders are willing to go to preserve their positions of “power.” While the Arab peoples and all peoples of conscience around the world rose up in unison against Israel’s battering of the Lebanese people and infrastructure, Arab leaders were spewing out accusations against Hizbullah, calling them “irresponsible” and their capture of two Israeli soldiers “a miscalculated wager.”

While the positions of certain Arab countries, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt in particular, are no surprise to anyone really, a stab in the back always hurts. Only Syria – after maintaining a calculated silence throughout the war – is now expressing its open praise for the resistance. In all fairness, Bashaar Al Asad also said if it his country were attacked by Israel it would duly respond. It seems the bombing of Syrian fruit picking workers at the Lebanese-Syrian border was not enough to elicit any such reaction.

There were other, surprisingly delightful lessons as well. While Arab leaders cowered behind their false sense of independence and cringed at the mention of Arab resistance, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would not be silenced. On August 3, he abruptly recalled his country’s ambassador to Israel in protest of the attacks on Lebanon, calling the Israeli offensive “genocide.”

Chavez’ stance, along with other people’s of conscience such as British MP George Galloway, who blasted Israel as a “terrorist state” during a Sky News interview, were lessons of bravery in the face of a blatantly polarized world. These two men knew, as per the new “post-September 11 world order” that as long as you gave a hint of support for anyone other than the United States and Israel, you would inevitably be branded as pro-terrorist. And still, they would not be intimidated. In years to come, these men’s stances will not easily be forgotten, neither to the resistance in Lebanon nor to the Palestinians.

This brings us to the most important lesson of all, which is the lesson of Palestine. Israel’s behavior in Lebanon is nothing unexpected. The Palestinians in particular have come to expect its arrogant brutality and its self-righteous attitude that it can act as it pleases as long as its “security” is being threatened. The fact that it unjustifiably killed scores of Lebanese civilians and took out great chunks of the country’s infrastructure did not deter it from claiming these measures were necessary to secure its goal of obliterating the Hizbullah threat. Still, Israel’s objectives in Lebanon are far from those in Palestine and this is why the two situations can never be equated.

Unlike Lebanon, Israel is willing to risk much more in terms of money and human losses to further its goals in Palestine. While Israel’s miscalculations in Lebanon in terms of Hizbullah’s capabilities and their own human losses greatly contributed to their acceptance of UN resolution 1701 calling for an “end to hostilities”, there was also the factor that, in simple laymen’s terms, it “just wasn’t worth it.” Israel does not have any expansionist aspirations in Lebanon even if it does still maintain its occupation of the Shebaa Farms strip in the south. It does not want to annihilate the Lebanese or their national aspirations even if it does want to neutralize any “hostile” group on the other side of the border.

In Palestine, Israel’s goals are existential. There are illegal Jewish settlements and hundreds of thousands of settlers at stake. There are the Zionist expansionist aspirations and there is the so-called biblical prophesy of the “Promised Land.” For Israel, UN resolutions calling for its withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories are easily discarded and Israeli lives lost to the ongoing conflict are happily sacrificed in the name of the larger cause.

This is a lesson we must all take to heart. The complex situation in Palestine requires much more than feeble calls for Israel to halt its atrocities and racist policies against an entire people. History has proven that UN resolutions are equally as inadequate in bringing about a comprehensive solution. What is desperately needed here and now is for Israel to finally be held accountable for its blatant disregard of the will of dignified nations. The United Nations, the United States and the world at large must settle this conflict on the basis of true justice. If Israel will not comply with the standards it demands from those it so easily wages war on, then it should be sanctioned, ostracized, isolated and shunned until it accepts its responsibilities.

It is time for Israel to learn from the Lebanon lesson. A people may be beaten into submission for a time, they may be bombed, slaughtered and displaced but they will not be forever silenced. Israel must realize that it will never be able to fulfill its expansionist goals in Palestine and live in peace and security at the same time. While the situation in Palestine may be far more complex than that of Lebanon, the solution for Israel is actually quite elementary. If Israel wants to save its people, live in security and in peace with its neighbors, if it wants to be accepted by all peace-loving nations in the world, it must do this: get out of Lebanon and the Golan Heights and get out of Palestine.

According to George Galloway, these are the ABC’s of politics. “No justice no peace,” he said. How hard is that to comprehend?

Joharah Baker is a Writer for the Media and Information Programme at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She could be contacted at mip@miftah.org