This war will go on, said Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert on August 2, as the European Union wound up an August 1 meeting in Brussels to discuss its possible role in the Middle East peace plan, and confusedly so. The statement the 25 countries prepared after four hours of talk called for an immediate end to hostilities, and not an instant cease-fire, which was the initial summoning call of the Finnish presidency.

The two terms may devilishly appear to mean the same, but they don’t. The distinction the EU25 drew was largely the result of the influence EU countries closer to the US – the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Denmark – exercised over the rest, MSNBC said. So war will continue until an international army is not just ready to be deployed, but is in fact deployed in Lebanon, Olmert said.

If we add to this the botched UN attempt to call for a cease-fire, and UK indecision as to whether its government is trying to shift away from the traditional pro-George W Bush policy, things continue to look excitingly bad, at least for the media.

Media coverage of events in the Middle East apes the way the world’s countries are responding, an American of Jewish descent told The Sofia Echo.

“There is the surface issue: who doesn’t want a ceasefire and peace, and then the real issue – which is much more on the surface this time around – and which is that Bush enters the circles of violence in the Middle East (in a way) reminiscent of school yard fights between kids: ‘But YOU STARTED it!’

Another truth is that the forever-Israeli position about Arafat (and I guess in an extended metaphor – about the Lebanon case), is that “the Israeli position about Arafat (and with much justification) could apply to the Israelis (as well), and that is, that he and they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” he said.

In the case of Hezbollah, the opportunity not missed is to obviously have the whole world think of Israel as the aggressor – a strategy that is so far working – and that, most recently, was supported by Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki as well.

The view that the Arab countries had so far silently supported Israel’s actions, because they wanted Hezbollah out of the way just as much, a view supported by Iraqi journalist living in Bulgaria Mohamed Halaf, is not true, Iraqi ambassador to Bulgaria Hayder S. al-Barrak told The Sofia Echo.

“This guy is trying to confuse the newspapers,” Al-Barrak said. “We may not agree with the kidnapping of soldiers, but Israel’s reaction was not even, and we would always defend our brothers against the Israeli. It’s like I hit you with a fist, and you respond with artillery.”

Israel’s raid into Lebanon has resulted in the entire destruction of the infrastructure of Hezbollah (and of Lebanon, for that matter), with more than 700 command positions “wiped out”, if we are to trust Olmert.

Still, Hezbollah managed to fire a rocket 70km into Israel – the deepest hit yet – a distance not expected, the BBC said; moreover, radical Sunni groups usually hostile to Shiites have urged support for Hezbollah, Harper’s Magazine said. And the latter may turn the balance of power in the Middle East on its head, bringing further advantages to militant Islam.

“Don’t believe these things,” Al-Barrak said, countering the argument that American and British presence in Iraq has more harmed than helped solve the terrorist problem – the former view being supported by a majority of the population of 33 out of 35 countries the BBC polled. “And you have to differentiate between the two cases. The war is between Lebanon and Israel, not between the Shia Hezbollah and Israel. The whole Lebanese government is behind the resistance.”

The war is actually not even a war between Lebanon and Israel, Al-Barrak said later on, “it is a war between America on the one side and Syria and Iran on the other. It is a war to clean the debts between them. And those in the middle pay the costs. America is using Israel. This is not my saying, it is what other Arab countries say as well,” he said.

As US senator Johnson Hiram put it in the beginning of the 20th century, however, when war comes, the first casualty is always truth, so an Israeli counterargument is deeply necessary here.

“The world only sympathises with us when we do nothing. And we do your work – we have to take action in Lebanon so you feel safe in Madrid or Sofia.”

So, what is Sofia doing to prevent being hit by terrorists in the meantime?

It is expressing “serious worry” at the “escalation of military tension” between Israel and Hezbollah, and pulling out another 15 of its nationals from Lebanon (after the Foreign Ministry earlier claimed that Bulgaria was the first country to withdraw its people from Lebanon and that it had no more nationals in Beirut); while neighbouring Bucharest is issuing statements supporting the creation and deployment of a multi-national force to Lebanon, but abstains from promising participation in it, saying that the international community can nevertheless count on Bucharest’s support to restore peace in Lebanon and guarantee the security of Israel.

Compared to Bucharest, and Athens’ Dora Bakoyannis’ recent referral to the war as “an apotheosis of absurdity”, and her calling for an immediate cease-fire, Bulgaria is shy. That is, despite its long-standing good relations with both countries – and Bulgaria is actually one of few countries in the world that can say that – and its willingness to sell itself as the diplomat of the region.

Al-Barrak understands this behaviour: “If I were to decide for Bulgaria, I would stay as neutral as I can, having in mind the country’s good relations with both sides,” he said. Bulgaria can function as a bridge between the EU and the Arab world, Al-Barrak said, repeating a statement Arab ambassadors to Bulgaria came up with earlier this year. Because it is only one country away from the Middle East and it has excellent relations – political, economical and cultural – with Arab states, while also having a lot of “Eastern specificities”, as Al-Barrak put it, coming out from the 500-year-long Turkish occupation.

However, until the year 2000 almost, Bulgaria had done little to come to terms with its own political strategy for relations with the Middle East, Al-Barrak said. And “we understand that”, he added, pointing to strict EU accession requirements as one reason. The EU membership is not something Arab states feel negative about, al-Barrak said, because it could further transform Bulgaria into a bridge between the EU, the whole Balkan region and the Arab world.

But Bulgaria doesn’t seem to do much about it.

Meanwhile, Lebanese received late-night phone calls from the Israeli government, but a woman complained about being unable to talk back to those recorded messages, Harper’s Magazine said. And Hezbollah sent mobile-phone text messages to dozens of Israelis, too, aping Israel, while media went on aping government reactions, which aped each other and aped the confusion coming with it, and nobody could do anything to stop it.