Israel has failed to achieve a military victory on the ground over the past four weeks. (Reuters)

CAIRO — The controversial Franco-American draft resolution on the Lebanon war seeks to give Israel a diplomatic victory after its humiliating military performance and to drive a wedge among the different Lebanese factions united by the war, Lebanese and Arab pundits agreed.

"The draft is an attempt to save Israel from the Lebanese quagmire by helping it attain political and diplomatic gains it failed to accomplish in the battlefield," Lebanese political analyst Talal Atrisi told IslamOnline.net.

"The resolution also seeks to break the Lebanese political will," he added.

The US-French draft resolution calls for "cessation of hostilities", the disarming of Hizbullah and the release of two Israeli soldiers taken prisoner by the resistance group.

It also calls for "the settlement" of a dispute over Lebanese prisoners held by Israel and demands "full respect" of the Blue Line, the unofficial frontier between Israel and Lebanon, by both sides.

The draft seeks an international force to police a buffer zone in southern Lebanon once agreement on a long term political settlement is reached.

However, the text does not call for an immediate ceasefire nor the immediate withdrawal of some 10,000 Israeli forces from southern Lebanon.

With full Arab support, Lebanon is seeking changes to the draft, to bring it in line with his government's seven-point plan to halt the fighting.

Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa and the foreign ministers of Qatar, the only Arab member on the Security Council, and the United Arab Emirates, which holds the current rotating presidency of the Arab League, are already in New York to press for the changes.

Will Breaking

Pundits believe the Franco-American draft is also seeking to drive a wedge among different Lebanese factions and sects, so far united against the Israeli enemy.

"This is an exposed attempt to bit Lebanese again one another and break the Lebanese will," Qassim Qussir, another Lebanese political analyst, told IOL.

"They mistakenly think that some Lebanese political powers are starting to loose hearts and would accept any international resolution to stop the war," he added.

On Monday, August 7, which saw some of the heaviest Israeli bombing since the war began, at least 69 people were killed.

At least 20 people were killed and 26 people missing after two residential buildings collapsed during a bombing raid late Monday on south Beirut.

Israel has killed more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians, in Lebanon since July 12, drawing fire from human rights agencies for indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets.

Qussir stressed that the Israeli onslaught has on the contrary united Lebanon's otherwise political foes.

"There is a national consensus in Lebanon on the seven-point plan endorsed by the government to end the conflict," he added.

The plan calls for the release of the Lebanese and Israeli prisoners under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Israeli withdrawal to the Blue Line and respect of the 1949 Armistice agreement.

It also calls for the return of Lebanese people driven from their homes by the fighting and enforcing the authority of the Lebanese government to the all Lebanese territories.

The plan further calls for empowering the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and to put the occupied Shebaa Farms under the UN mandate.

Unrealistic

Mohamed el-Sayed Saed, an expert with the Cairo-based Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies think tank, said the draft was "unrealistic".

"It can not be implemented on the ground."

Saed asserted that the call to disarm victorious Hizbullah can not be practically achieved.

"This would mean political suicide for the party, which is winning the war against Israel," he added.

The Lebanese resistance group has inflicted heavy losses on the Israeli occupation forces.

Prominent British writer Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent Monday that the draft only served Israeli interests.

"A close analysis of the American-French draft - the fingerprints of John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, were almost smudging the paragraphs - showed just who is running Washington's Middle East policy: Israel."