The interminable Arab-Israel conflict has come to an important moment. Israel’s quest for secure borders has so much in common with the existential needs of its neighbors that as Lebanon stands at the crossroads, so does the Arab world.

Many in the vast, silent Arab majority have become convinced over the past decade that they will never build a future for themselves or their children as long as turbaned hoodlums — such as Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, uniformed pseudo-revolutionaries like Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gadhafi, and their ilk — continue to embark on armed struggles in the name of God or hallucinatory visions of Arab nationalism.

For those who read, watch, and listen to Arabic press and broadcast outlets, as well as coffee-table chatter, the subtext of conversations among Arabs today is this: We are done with chasing windmills, we need to use oil money to build, and we want to look forward, not backward. To be sure, the tired jihadist slogan “No voice shall be louder than that of the battle” still fills the air, but it is, for the most part, just white noise.

I haven’t heard such sentiments since the debacle of June 1967, when Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser packed Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian Arabs, and much of the Arab world off to a devastating defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War. After that tragedy, which became known as “the Catastrophe,” Nasser’s battle cry of Arab nationalism simply collapsed.

Unfortunately, this void was quickly filled by Wahhabi-powered Islamic jihadism from the dark heart of the Arabian Desert — the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its sinister priesthood mafia. Ideologically and financially, this jihadism was propped up by profoundly reactionary concepts, as was Iran’s more revolutionary version, which came about after that country’s religious revolution of 1979. Both versions were supported by insecure regimes.

By definition, both Wahhabi and Iranian religious demagoguery — and their tributaries Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the entire McDonald’s-like franchise of jihadist fantasies, including the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah — are nihilist, seeking to substitute the existing order in complicated societies with the comfort of medieval ignorance.

None of the branches of this movement possesses a social project or anything close to it. Today’s Arabs understand that this won’t do in 2006. Now that the jihadists have brought their fight to Lebanon, it is by no means sure that they will exit intact or triumphant.

What is evident is that silent majorities among the Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians, and much of the vast world of Sunni Islam are rooting openly or quietly for the demise of Hezbollah, as well as an end to jihadism. No Arab armies are rushing to assist Sheik Nasrallah in Lebanon. Images of the sectarian butchery that these jihadist forces have unleashed in Iraq are more than sobering, as is the mayhem that Islamic jihadists brought to Gaza and onto the whole Palestinian Arab landscape long before the current war in Lebanon. In this sense, Lebanon has emerged as their latest front.

It is precisely in Lebanon where it seems a difference could be made — by drawing a line in the sand that bars any further jihadist initiatives.

Right now, Israel is doing the work.

But once the shooting stops, the dust settles, and everyone surveys the damage, Israel hopes that the silent Arab majority will place the blame where it truly belongs: upon the terrorists in their midst.

Poor Lebanon. Such is its fate that a battle that should have destroyed Syria, Hezbollah, and the ultimate villain of this drama, Iran, is being fought instead in Lebanese valleys and towns. Still, Lebanon possesses the best of the Arab world — a highly educated population, a spirit of free enterprise, and a multilingual, multiethnic, and multicultural society that stands on the cusp on modernity, globalization, and sophistication.

It will make a comeback, if for no other reason that, at this point, far too many Arabs understand that enough is enough.

A prominent writer for the Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat, Hoda Al Husseini, put it well yesterday when she argued that, in the end, Sheik Nasrallah and those like him — including Hamas and the other jihadis who launch wars on the enemy only to destroy their own nations, people, and welfare — will be looked upon by fellow Arabs as people who “hate Israel far more than they love their own people.”

With each passing day of the Lebanon war, this is sinking in.