The top priority should be to quickly end the fighting that has cost hundreds of lives, displaced close to a million people and destroyed countless millions of dollars in infrastructure and homes. Negotiations to secure a long-term durable solution to the conflict will be complex, long and difficult. To set these complex negotiations -- on issues like disarming Hezbollah in Lebanon and strengthening the country's central government -- as a precondition to end hostilities will only prolong the conflict. The Israeli justice minister Haim Ramon already said that Israel interprets the U.S.'s unwillingness to call for an immediate ceasefire unless it is linked to such terms as a green light to continue its offensive.

Furthermore, the situation has now deteriorated so far that there is unlikely to be any quick fix solution. Therefore an immediate truce is essential. The U.S.'s apparent strategy to give Israel more time to hit Hezbollah militarily so that the movement might agree to more lenient terms of settlement is likely to backfire. To quote the Israeli columnist Gideon Levy: "a decisive (Israeli) victory is not in the offing". Levy this week wrote in Ha' aretz (the Israeli newspaper): "It is worth reminding ourselves of the dozens of people Israel assassinated in Lebanon and the territories, from Sheikh Abbas Musawi to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, each replaced by someone new - usually more talented and dangerous than the predecessor".

Israel's goals are just not squaring with its strategies. The return of the captured soldiers -- one of Israel's main demands -- can only be resolved at the negotiation table. The pounding of Lebanon into oblivion raises the spectre that out of the ashes a Somalia-like failed state could emerge. This would be much more of a threat to Israeli citizens.

Not stopping the war will come at a higher cost both when body bag starts to rise and as hardened views against the country in the Middle East and the rest of the world spread. It is only likely to isolate the U.S. and its allies, the UK and Canada, from the United Nations and the rest of the world.

It is clear that there is still a sound case for multilateralism. Going it alone, as it has proved in the case of Iraq is absolutely unwise. From a broader U.S. foreign policy perspective, this widening rift between the U.S. and the rest of the world will undermine the war against terror. It can only reduce U.S. moral legitimacy on the globe. It just does not square that the U.S. should supply "bunker-buster" bombs to Israel (transported via Britain) as the conflict is raging. Even-handedness is important. One should abide by the same rules even if one thinks the other side more repugnant.

Rice observed in the Middle East: "What we're seeing here, in a sense, is ... the birth pangs of a new Middle East and, whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one". However, if an immediate ceasefire is not brokered, the conflict will escalate and suck in the whole region. Then we might indeed see a new Middle East, but it will be a more violent, uncertain and dangerous one than the old.