But the conflict in Gaza is not, at heart, about the future Palestine. It is about the future ideological direction of the Muslim world. The reasons why Hamas hides its weaponry in civilian areas, why it has received relatively little support from moderate Arab states and why Israel is prepared to pay such a heavy price to defang it, are all interlinked. It is because Hamas is not a national liberation movement but an Islamist terrorist group in league with Iran. Hamas's aim is not the creation of a free, democratic Palestine but the use of conflict to spread jihad more widely. Hamas can be careless with Palestinian lives because Palestinian flourishing is not its main aim. If it were, then all its energies would have been devoted to state-building.

Hamas does not want to redraw Israel's borders; it wants no borders behind which the Jewish people can feel safe. The Hamas Covenant, with its pledges that the Day of Judgment will come only with the final hunting down of the Jews, is not a manifesto for liberation but a warrant for bloodshed.

Unless we appreciate this, and see how it fits more broadly into the bigger picture of the Islamist assault on the West, we will, tragically, be condemned to see more suffering in the future. It is only through prevailing in a wider ideological battle between the forces of democracy and those of totalitarianism that we can secure lasting peace.