To adapt Winston Churchill's famous phrase, jaw-jaw has replaced war-war in the Middle East, at least for the time being, and that has to be a change for the better. Israel now has to digest the rough handling its army received from Hezbollah, decide whether the campaign was a catastrophe or not, and if so, whom to sack. The Government of Lebanon has to begin the huge task of reconstruction following Israel's wanton and reckless air campaign, and must resolve its internal differences over whether and how to disarm Hezbollah. Hezbollah itself has to see whether its newly heroic status in the Arab street brings it any practical advantage, to offset the damage it has suffered to its military capability. In claiming victory over Israel, it has the benefit of never having declared its war aims, so no one can say whether they were achieved or not. But presumably being disarmed by French soldiers in UN helmets was not one of them, which is what the Security Council now insists should happen.

Though its right to defend itself was never in doubt, Israel lost enormous moral credit by the way it went about that defence. More than 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed, mainly by bombing, which suggests that air force targeting was routinely based on poor or non-existent intelligence - an impression confirmed by Israel's inability to locate and destroy Hezbollah's rocket launchers. The boast by one Israeli minister that Lebanon's development would be "put back 20 years" indicates a disgraceful willingness to disregard international law, attack civil infrastructure and take innocent life.

None of the problems of the region has been made any

easier by this outcome. While the world was focused on Israel's northern frontiers, the situation in Gaza continued to deteriorate. Hamas, which controls the West Bank, will have been emboldened by Hezbollah's success. Worse, a weak American Government seems to have lost its will to broker peace in the region, ...

A few days before the International Aids Conference in Toronto, a report on HIV-Aids in Africa by the mainly evangelical agency Tearfund has concluded that church congregations all over Africa are in the front line in dealing with the depredations of Aids. Working with extended families, they are particularly notable in the care they give to the millions of orphans the epidemic has produced. The report calls for a ...

So far, the usual long, hot summer of sectarian tension associated with the marching season in Northern Ireland has passed without a single soldier on the streets. Gradually the old hatreds seem to be diminishing, for which some credit has to go to the Nationalist community's traditional foe, the Orange Order. The Government has proposed turning the annual Orange marches, once the focus of anti-Catholic antagonism, ...

The citizens of Britain, like those of other Western countries, think it normal to fly abroad on holiday, sometimes several times a year. They think it normal for families to own several cars. They timetable their lives around rapid travel and high consumption of energy. This week the Anglican Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, asked them to consider what they are doing to the planet. Climate change is accelerating ...