Israel should deal with terrorists not by attacking Lebanon but rather by trying to negotiate the existence of a Palestinian state, writes Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist who won the most recent Pulitzer prize for commentary, in a column yesterday. He offers the example of Great Britain, which negotiated with the Irish Republican Army, and Spain, which negotiated with the Basque separatist group known as the ETA. Thanks to British and Spanish “restraint,” “Britain and Spain are today peaceful, against all odds,” Mr. Kristof writes.

Peaceful? That must come as news to the families of the 191 persons who were killed in the March 11, 2004 Madrid bombings, which featured 10 bombs on four trains in three stations during morning rush hour. Or to the families of the 52 persons who were killed by four bombs in the London bus and underground transit system on July 7, 2005. Some peace. Some judgment. Mr. Kristof’s readers are still waiting for him to acknowledge the fact that the terrorist, Sami al-Arian, whom he defended for so long as having been an innocent professor, turns out, by his own admission, to be guilty of terrorist-related offenses.

The aggressors in the London and Madrid bombings weren’t after control of Northern Ireland or the Basque territory, any more than the Palestinian Arab terrorists are after control of the West Bank and Gaza. They have a goal that is far more extreme and impossible to compromise on — to create a new caliphate that would conquer both Israel and Christendom and extend Islamic rule around the world. In this sense the phrase that Senator Santorum used last week in Washington — “Islamic fascism” — has the virtue of precision, because the Islamic fascists, like the World War II-era Nazis and unlike Irish or Basque nationalists, are bent on world domination.

This is clear not only from their statements, which openly boast of this goal, but from their actions, which are not limited to attacks on Israel, but include attacks in London, Madrid, Bali, Buenos Aires, Kenya, Tanzania, and, not least, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The degree to which our best intellectuals — and Mr. Kristof is nothing if not intelligent — want to turn away from these statements and these acts is one of the great tragedies of the left in our time.

None of this is to suggest that non-Israeli sovereignty in Gaza and in some of the West Bank isn’t a matter that Israel might decide is, for demographic reasons, in its interests. Or it might not. But the war in Lebanon isn’t even about the Palestinian Arabs. Israel already tried withdrawing from Southern Lebanon and from Gaza and from much of the West Bank. The Arabs responded by using the territory to launch missiles and raids inside the 1948 borders of Israel. This is one reason why Israelis themselves, normally riven by factions, are so united in their campaign now in Lebanon.

To counsel, as Mr. Kristof does, that “restraint” and a “softer approach” and “conciliation” will bring peace in this war misunderstands the nature of the enemy. Even in the cases of the IRA and the ETA, British and Spanish gains stemmed less from concessions and more from the defeat of the Soviet Union, which had been a sponsor of both terrorist groups. It’s sad, because the present war has innocent victims both in Israel and in Lebanon. But our own view, contra Kristof, is that the path to a peace in this conflict, both for Israel and for the other countries of the West, will come not by restraint but by victory.