Fundamentalist Islamic terror organizations such as Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, and Hamas have spent years studying us. They have watched Western culture, they have lived among us, and they have tested us psychologically and militarily. They believe in their cause to the point that they are willing to die -- en-masse -- to defeat us, and what's more they think they are winning. Unfortunately, Western societies, while watching the atrocities of Islamic terror on Television and the Internet, almost daily, have mostly failed to understand the nature of the enemy and the threat.

First and foremost, we must understand the strategic and tactical goals of these organizations. Strategically, the goal is clear, as enumerated time and again by the faces of Islamic terror, most recently by Al-Qaeda's second, Ayman al-Zawahiri: "J ihad seeks the liberation of Palestine, the entire country of Palestine, and to liberate every land that used to be a territory of Islam, from Spain to Iraq. The entire world is an open field for us, so just like they attack us everywhere, we will attack them everywhere, and just like they united to fight us, our Muslim nation, we will unite to fight them." Fundamentalist Islamic groups view every square inch ever ruled by Muslims to be holy Islamic territory or "waqf," and as such believe that there can not be peace with the West until these territories are regained and that their version of the "one true religion" is dominant.

Tactically, the battle against the West takes on many fronts. The "Crusader army" (United States) is being fought in Iraq, the "infidels" (Russians) in Chechnya, the "idol worshippers" (Indian Hindus) in Kashmir, and of course the "Zionists" (Israelis) in "Palestine." Abdel Rahman al-Rashed of the Al-Arabiya news channel wrote "It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims." In fact, of the world's 17 armed flashpoints, 15 involve Islam.

Understanding the rhetoric and propaganda of these groups further helps illuminate their goals. Americans are not the enemy simply because we support Israel or hunt Bin-Laden, rather we are "Crusaders" and therefore are considered Infidels (non-believers) bent on taking over Muslim lands. Indians are not the enemy because of disputed Kashmir but because as "idol worshippers" (Hindus), the Koran says that they should be "put to the sword." Israelis are the enemy not merely because they are mostly Jews, but rather because as "Zionists" that they believe that they have a connection to the holy land of Zion and Jerusalem.

Increasingly, many around the world are calling for a "cease-fire" in the current conflict in Lebanon against Hezbollah. Even the world used in Arabic for cease-fire, "hudna," is a loaded term. Hudna is defined in Arabic as a temporary truce such as the truce made by Muhammad at Hudabiyeh with the Qureish, in which a 10 year truce was signed and then broken by Muhammad's forces 2 years later when he believed his enemies were too weak to resist. As such, a cease-fire that leaves Hezbollah in tact and able to operate again simply allows the group to rearm, become even more dangerous, and reignite the conflagration the next time it is expedient.

The nightly images of pain and destruction beamed to us via Satellite ignite emotions of pathos, angst, and dread. As freedom loving people, we watch these images and want to put an immediate end to them, calling for a "cessation of hostilities" or an "end to the violence." Unfortunately, an immediate end to the low-grade war raging in Northern Israel and Lebanon right now will not bring about an end to the suffering, nor a safer life for any of those involved.

Hezbollah has been allowed to operate as a guerilla group among the civilian population of Lebanon. They have no uniform and dress as civilians while hiding their weapons and ammunitions not in bases but rather within civilian towns and villages. Hezbollah fires its rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians from within apartments, schools, and Mosques and then screams "massacre" when these locations are later hit by Israeli counter-fire. They claim to fight for Lebanon, yet operate completely outside of Lebanese sovereignty, collecting their own taxes, keeping their own army, police, courts and jails. Their influence in Lebanon has been growing and their leader, Nasrallah has publicly declared that he wishes to turn Lebanon into an Iranian style theocracy.

Like the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Baathists in Iraq, Hezbollah have been destroying Lebanon from within and attempting to mold the country in their own fundamentalist image. By attacking Israel, Nasrallah plunged Lebanon into war without any regard for the will of the Lebanese government or people. Any cease-fire can only play further into his hands and strengthen his credibility with the Arab world.

We must understand the stakes of what is involved in our "War on Terror" and the key battle currently being waged between the people of Israel and Hezbollah's "Party of God." Iran's National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani was recently quoted by his own ISNA news agency as saying that "The US is trying to change the map of the Middle East for its own interests," and he is absolutely right. The question is whether the liberal, pluralistic, democratic values of the West will triumph over terror, chaos, and Islamic theocracy or will we forever allow ourselves to be held hostage by murderous gangs bent on our annihilation. The Bin-Laden's, Al-Zawahiri's, and Nasrallah's of the world have made their position abundantly clear. Have We?

In June of 1948, scarcely one month after the establishment of the State of Israel, the nascent Israeli Defense Forces were at war with the combined Arab armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Badly outnumbered, and desperately in need of supplies, the Jewish defenders found themselves embargoed by most of the major world powers and trying to strike any deals that they could for armaments and war materiel. The Irgun, a militant right-wing organization headed by (later prime minister) Menachem Begin had managed to smuggle a ship full of weapons and ammunitions from France called the "Altalena." When David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, found out about the Altalena and its arms, he demanded that its cargo be made available to the Israeli Defense Forces and not to the militant Irgun. Although they were fighting the same enemies, Ben-Gurion realized that a state with an army and militias under more than one command was not a sovereign state at all and would not long survive. When the Irgun refused the command, Ben-Gurion had the Altalena fired upon and sunk along with 82 Irgun fighters and the loss of its precious cargo.

The Altalena affair, as the incident became known, polarized Israeli society for years. Ben-Gurion's pre-independence militia, the Palmach, eventually became today's Labor party and Begin's Irgun, eventually became today's Likud party. Debates about the efficacy and morality of the order to fire upon the Altalena have not been settled to this day, however one thing is clear: Following the Altalena affair, the Irgun and the Palmach's armed forces did merge together as one Israeli Defense Forces under the joint command of the Israeli Prime Minister.

The destruction and demolition raging now in Lebanon and Gaza are testament to the lack of an Arab Altalena. That is, both Lebanon and the Palestinians have summarily failed to unify the arms in their territories under one command structure accountable to their governments.

When Israel reentered the Gaza strip last week in order to free its kidnapped soldier and stop the incessant rocket attacks across the border, the Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, called on Palestinian security forces to stop the Israelis by any means necessary. Besides a few suicidal Hamas terrorists trying to launch missiles and plant roadside bombs, practically no one lifted a finger to comply with his order. In fact, most of the official Palestinian security forces are loyal to Fatah, the party of Yassir Arafat, now headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the titular Palestinian President. Prior to the incursion, battles had been raging for weeks, not between the Israelis and Palestinians, but by Fatah and Hamas for control of areas within Gaza.

Many statements have been issued by world leaders regarding "the crisis" raging in the Middle East with calls of "restraint" going out to all sides in the current conflict. Strangely silent have been some of the conflict's most familiar players: Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan's King Hussein, and Egypt's President Mubarak. All three players realize that they have much to gain by staying on the sidelines and allowing Israel to battle Hamas. Abbas' Fatah party is the main beneficiary, as their primary Palestinian rival is weakened and embarrassed on their home turf. Egypt, with is own Islamist problems, watched the Palestinian elections in fear that the Muslim Brothers of Hamas would export their fundamentalism and destabilize Egypt. Jordan's King Hussein has repeatedly called on Israel to ensure that Palestinians would not flood over the West Bank frontier into Jordan and further weaken his own Hashemite Kingdom. The lessons of his father's slaughter of Palestinians on Black September in the 1970's has not been lost on Hussein who knows that Palestinian nationalism can easily destabilize Jordan. All three leaders have been satisfied to watch Israel do their own dirty work against the Islamist militants of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and as such have been paying little more than lip service to stopping the confrontation. They are strengthened by the weakening of Hamas and know that the Israeli retaliations play well into their own anti-Israel propaganda among their own populations.

Far more dangerous than Hamas, are the terrorists of Hizbollah. Scions of the Shiite clan leaders of Lebanon's sectarian wars of the 1970's and 80's, Hizbollah would like to see an Iranian style theocracy throughout the region. Hizbollah's brazen penetration into Israel on July 12 when it killed 3 Israeli soldiers, kidnapped 2 others and barraged northern Israeli towns with rockets, precipitated the large scale Israeli response into Lebanon that is threatening to plunge the area into war. Although similar to Hamas' kidnapping the previous week, Hizbollah's aggression was part of a much larger effort to flare up tensions orchestrated by Iran. It was no accident that the abduction took place on the very day that Tehran was ordered by the G8 to respond to a series of incentives intended to stop its uranium enrichment. Tehran gambles that by turning the world's focus away from itself and onto the Israelis, it could buy more precious time and a propaganda victory that would lead it ever closer to its nuclear goals.

Iran's revolutionary guards have played an important part in Lebanese politics since the late 1970's. Iranian armament and training let Hizbollah successfully kill 241 US Marines in their barracks in 1982, causing the withdrawal of American forces from Lebanon. The revolutionary guards also played a large part in coordinating Syria's occupation of Lebanon that has only now begun to withdraw. The real power-base of Iran within Lebanon, however, has always been the Shiite fighters of Hizbollah who it funds with over $150m a year and supplies with lethal modern armaments like the Chinese made Silkworm missile that it used to attack an Israeli Navy boat on Saturday.

What unites the two conflicts that Israel is fighting simultaneously are that both are militant groups that operate within elected governments, but are not answerable to those governments. Neither the Palestinians, nor the Lebanese have ever mustered the courage to face up to the militants in their midsts and order their own Altalena -- the forcible unification of arms under the sovereign control of one government. Both are similar in that they fear their governments are not strong enough to take on the militants and impose their will; however by not lifting a finger to stop the senseless provocations and acts of war on Israel, they have invited massive retribution by the most powerful and well armed country in the Middle East today. Worse, by inviting the senseless destruction of their own infrastructure, not only are the interests of their own people not served, rather they are aiding the interests of the fundamentalist Shia government in Iran.

Iran knows better than to attack Israel or the US directly, rather it has expertly hidden behind its terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Syria. It receives all the gains from the chaos ushered in their wake and receives almost none of the punishment suffered by the innocent civilians unfortunate enough to live near them. We should learn two important lessons from the current conflagration: First, that it is essential to pressure both the Palestinians and the Lebanese to eliminate the armed factions and terrorists in their midsts or they will forever be blackmailed by these groups' incessant provocations towards war. Second, that the Western world can not afford to sit back, watch, and talk forever as Iran continues its march towards a nuclear weapon. We are seeing the results of modern missiles being irresponsibly funneled to terrorist groups. Let us not wait and see what would happen if these same missiles one day have nuclear tips courtesy of the Mullah's in Tehran.

In the summer of 2002, only 4 years ago, I attended a convention where former president Clinton was the keynote speaker. Clinton spoke about a variety of subjects, mostly about how American commerce would be affected in the aftermath of Sept. 11th, and then took questions from the audience. The first question asked "What do you think are the reasons that the Camp David Summit [of 2000, between Pres. Clinton, Israeli PM Barak, and Palestinian Chairman Arafat] failed to achieve a peace treaty?" Clearly invested in the topic, Clinton took almost as long to answer this question as he did the entire keynote that preceded it.

In a nutshell, what he said was that "believe it or not, almost all of the major points of contention between the Israeli negotiating team and the Palestinian team were resolved." All of the issues that everyone believes to be intractable: borders, refugees, Jerusalem, water, all were practically agreed upon. "The reason that Camp David failed was basically because of one clause: That the agreement meant the end of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. In order to achieve a deal -- and a Palestinian state -- Arafat needed to agree that the conflict would end then and there, and he was unwilling to do it." After telling a number of other stories regarding the negotiations, Clinton recalled a final phone call with Arafat three days before the end of his presidency in which Arafat told Clinton that he was a "great man." Clinton responded: "The hell I am, I'm a colossal failure, and you made me one."

I was recently thinking about Clinton's speech in the context of the present Israeli "incursion" into Gaza, observing how so much of the violence that has taken place in the last 4 years has been such an obscene waste. Whether at Camp David, Wye River, Taba, or other "summits," the Israelis and Palestinians have both basically understood what a final resolution to the conflict would mean and what it would look like. At least two Israeli Prime Ministers, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon were willing to make very significant sacrifices to achieve it and both found no Palestinian partner to reciprocate. How many lives have been lost in the meanwhile, on both sides, because no Palestinian leader with enough courage, or enough power has been able to speak for and lead his people?

In the absence of a viable "partner," Israel has decided to slowly and unilaterally "disengage" from the Palestinians. Withdrawing fully from Gaza in 2005, dismantling a number of Jewish towns and villages along the way, Israel watched and waited to see how the Palestinians would run a mini-state of their own. The Palestinians then elected Hamas to lead them, a terrorist group firmly committed to the destruction of Israel and no peace process whatsoever. What does the Hamas government then do to lead its people? Since assuming power, Hamas hasn't built one new school or commercial center, instead they have smuggled as many weapons as possible into Gaza and lobbed rockets into Israel. In other words, instead of actually trying to make life better for the citizens that elected them, Hamas chose to provoke Israel into precisely the type of incursion now taking place.

Hamas would like to characterize themselves as the victims of Israeli oppression, however Israel had already left the Gaza strip entirely a year earlier. If the Palestinians would have stopped missile crews from firing on Israel, there would have never been an incursion. Israel would like nothing better than to wash their hands entirely of the Palestinians and have both societies live separately and quietly. As Thomas Friedman of the NY Times recently put it: "The Palestinians could have a state on the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem tomorrow, if they and the Arab League clearly recognized Israel, normalized relations and renounced violence. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know Israel today. But those driving Palestinian politics seem determined to destroy Israel in its territory - even if it means destroying themselves in their own territory. "

Sadly, the lesson here for Israel, and the world, is simply that Palestinian government has not yet matured to the point that it can make peace with Israel. This is not an easy lesson to learn in the age of instant media and 4 year election cycles. We expect to be able to solve critical problems quickly, but as Henry Kissinger once put it "some problems can not be solved, we must resign ourselves simply to manage them."

It is unfortunate that Israel need disengage unilaterally from the Palestinians. It is unfortunate that Israeli citizens can likely expect no "peace" from this conflict in their lifetimes. It is unfortunate that Palestinians can expect to continue to live in squalor while their supposed leaders continue to exploit them to cynical ends. It is inevitable, however, that eventually Palestinian society will coalesce under increasingly strong leadership.

This is inevitable because the Palestinians will soon have no choice. When Israel launched its recent incursion, Egypt sent 2,500 troops to the border with Gaza, not to stop smuggling or to help broker a cessation of violence, but to stop any Gazans from making their way into Egypt. In a very real sense, Palestinians are on their own for the first time in their history. They will need to effectively govern themselves or they will continue to self destruct. Eventually, we hope, this will lead to a unification of the clan militias and mobs that make up Gaza today and the resulting government may one day be strong enough to actually lead its people into peace. This day will likely not come soon, but this day will likely come. The question is how many innocents need die in the meanwhile?