The great merit of the French-inspired resolution being discussed by the UN Security Council is its pragmatism. It makes no pretence to clarity; no pretence to be other than a stop-gap measure. It prefigures, but does not attempt to set out, military and political steps to end the conflict; these are deliberately left to subsequent negotiations.

This resolution focuses on the pressing need, which is to spare the majority of Lebanese from the terrible consequences of the war initiated by Hezbollah. It demands a “full cessation of hostilities”, but the wording implicitly acknowledges that if Hezbollah, as expected, continues its rocket attacks, Israel will hit back. The unspoken aim is thus to localise and scale down the intensity of the fighting, in order to create space for diplomatic and military solutions, including the deployment of a French-led international force, that will inevitably take weeks to negotiate and implement.

This incrementalism is a welcome change from the pretence, too often in evidence at the UN, that a Security Council resolution is a silver bullet. The Lebanese do not like it — as the French no doubt anticipated. Both France and America, working closely together as they consistently have done where Lebanon is concerned, are prepared to give the draft the odd nip and tuck, to demonstrate sympathy for Beirut’s predicament. But the true nature of that predicament, as France well understands, is that Hezbollah is the proverbial cuckoo in the Lebanese nest. Lebanon has rediscovered itself as a nation; but it evidently is still incapable of functioning as a state.

What Hezbollah rejects, the feeble Lebanese Government is powerless to endorse, however obvious it is that Lebanon needs a ceasefire far more urgently than it needs an Israeli withdrawal. This crisis has underlined how vulnerable Lebanon, which broke free only last year from Syrian occupation, still is to the machinations of Damascus and Tehran. The largely Shia Lebanese Army has neither the capacity, nor perhaps the will, to disarm the Hezbollah militias and destroy their stockpiles. An unaided attempt to do so would court the risk of civil war. To restore Lebanese sovereignty over the area between the Litani river and the border with Israel will require the muscular assistance of a strong French-led force, with a mandate to force Hezbollah to disarm. Such a force could take weeks to deploy. The Lebanese may not thank France for insisting on first things first. But it is the policy that answers best to their needs as is recognised by many of the nervous Arab governments in the region.

They have as much interest as does the West in ensuring that the flames in Lebanon are doused but that no rewards are given to Hezbollah, its Iranian and Syrian patrons, or, more broadly, to Shia extremism. The “stop Nasrallah” movement cannot be publicly articulated at a time when the Hezbollah leader’s attacks on Israel have made him a cult figure, but it is a movement with momentum.

Lebanon has been taken hostage by an extremist group; it is in the region’s interest for the country to be emancipated — and to do so without allowing Syria to edge back into the field. Iran’s hegemonic ambitions are obvious enough, and increasingly feared. A ceasefire that left Hezbollah even partially intact as a fighting force would also undermine the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as much as it would the leadership of Ehud Olmert in Israel, ruling out negotiations on a Palestinian state.

Washington has, with only minor caveats, been happy to lean on Paris; yet France has reason to complain that, with the exception of Britain, its EU partners have been slow to step up to the plate. They should come out far more robustly in France’s support. It is the only game in town.