MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov) - Now that a UN Security Council resolution has stopped the 34-day war between Israel and Hizbollah, both sides are claiming victory.

Hizbollah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, said it was "a strategic and historical victory" for his movement. According to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel won the war by attrition. U.S. President George W. Bush - no victory in the world is possible without a U.S. president - is speaking about the guiding role of American diplomats in drafting Resolution 1701.

But few people stop to think about the losers.

History may assign victory in the war in Lebanon to anyone or no one, but the apparent losers are those who had the least connection with it: the common people in Lebanon and Israel, who lost their relatives, homes, and possibly the hope of having peace in their lifetime.

According to the Israeli Defense Forces, 114 Israeli soldiers and 43 civilians died in the war. The number of civilian casualties in Lebanon is well over a thousand, and nobody has counted Hizbollah's losses, but even if somebody did, Hizbollah would say that the count was wrong.

This shocking difference between the sides' losses could be used as proof of Israel's disproportionate response to Hizbollah's initial attack, during which two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped. But what would an Israeli family that had spent weeks in a bomb shelter in Haifa say to this? And how would you feel about their story of the last drops of fresh water being divided among the children, and about taking short naps between frequent missile raids?

Human suffering cannot be measured in tears; human tragedy defies quantification.

This is one of the things people in Israel and Lebanon have in common, which is the reason for a comparable number of refugees in the two countries. According to the Office of the UN Higher Commissioner for Refugees and the government of Lebanon, Israeli bombing forced 700,000-900,000 Lebanese to flee to Syria. Human Rights Watch adds that about 500,000 Israelis were driven out of their homes by fear of Hizbollah's missiles.

This is what Olmert should have thought about when he ordered the Israeli army to strike, and what Nasrallah should have known when he sanctioned the use of longer-range missiles from the arsenals of Syria and Iran. Tens of thousands of refugees blocking the roads of Lebanon are the guilty verdict returned on the two sides' top leadership, who are responsible for provoking the incredible carnage whatever historical, patriotic or other justification they may use.

The Lebanese government claims that a month of Israeli bombing raids cost Lebanon $2.5 billion, but the combined damage is much bigger. Lebanon without bridges, roads, airports, electricity lines, schools and hospitals is like an amputee.

The $50 billion it spent on rebuilding the country after the 1975-1989 civil war has been wasted, or rather bombed out by Israeli planes.

It is much easier to rebuild roads and airports than to regain the trust of investors, who have been scared away by the war. Without them, the Lebanese budget may be short by about $600 million, and its economy by about $2 billion. These are critical sums for Lebanon, whose 2005 GDP was approximately $24 billion.

Lebanon does not need vague and toothless UN resolutions. What it needs is immediate and huge money injections to reconstruct everything that was destroyed in the war. The money should come as free aid, not loans. Leading Lebanese economists say $3 billion would be enough, for starters.

What will the international community say to this? The decision will be made at an international conference of about 60 donor countries in Stockholm, scheduled for August 31.

But is it perhaps too early to start clearing the war debris? Olmert said at a cabinet session after the ceasefire: "We will continue to hunt them [Hizbollah leaders] down always and everywhere, and we will not ask anyone for forgiveness or permission."

When Lebanese refugees from Bint Jbeil returned to their hometown, they saw nothing but ruins and the body of a dead woman that had been wrapped in polyethylene a fortnight before. There was no one to ask for forgiveness or permission.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.