But there is one thing you can be sure of . . . hiding from the bombs in bunkers all over south Lebanon, large numbers of pre-pubescent and adolescent boys are being politicised. And in two years, or five years or 10 years, they will take up arms and join the ranks of Hezbollah or whoever its successor will be.

And it's not just in the Middle East. All around the western world young Muslim men . . . watching the people with the right passports get safe passage out of Lebanon . . . are questioning why Muslim lives are worth so little. As the world stands by and allows the bloody carnage to continue, the conspiracy theory that the west is ultimately planning to destroy Islam is growing wings.

The indifference of Bush and other world leaders to the terrible suffering being inflicted by the state of Israel is feeding directly into the extremists' mission. How long before the moderates' message is lost on young Muslim men in British, French or Belgian ghettos and they start listening instead to the hate-mongers?

Al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman alZawahiri has already seen the opportunity, calling on Muslims not to "stand idly by" but to join the war against "crusaders and zionists". Leading the extremism on the other side and defending their bombing of a nation to rout out a terrorist organisation, Israeli justice minister Haim Ramon said "anyone still in southern Lebanon is linked to Hezbollah". If they weren't before they are now.

Israel is hellbent on destroying Hezbollah even if it means razing the villages of south Lebanon to the ground and killing anybody who can't or won't get out. America, with empty declarations about establishing a "durable" peace, continues to supply arms to Israel at an accelerated pace and will only consider a ceasefire on Israel's terms.

Two sane voices were heard this week offering the best hope for peace in the region. Terry Waite, who was held captive by Islamic jihadists in Beirut for five years, said there should be an immediate ceasefire and then an overall political settlement of the Palestinian issue.

Noel Dorr, our former ambassador to the UN, was of a similar view. The PalestinianIsraeli problem is like an infection seeping out into the whole area, he said. Unless the cancer is addressed, with the involvement of Israel, Hezbollah, Iran, Lebanon, Syria as well as the Sunni and Shia Muslims, there is no chance of peace.

The only long-term strategy with a chance of working lies in a political solution, not a military one. The only way to get to finding that political solution is an immediate ceasefire.

Former ambassador Dorr compared Hezbollah to the Lernaean Hydra from Greek mythology . . . when Heracles cut off one head of the serpent-like menace another grew up.

Heracles had to learn that he could not overcome the beast by a direct hit, but by craftier means. And although he succeeded in killing the beast, in the end he also lost his own life to the Hydra's poison blood.