Dangerous portents in West Asia

ISRAEL'S FORCED WITHDRAWAL from a re-occupied pocket of Palestinian territory has not really defused the new escalation of hostilities in West Asia. Dramatic indeed were the reports on Wednesday about a sudden pull-out by Israel's elite military units from the tiny recaptured area within the Gaza Strip, which remains under the Palestinian Authority's putative control in terms of an internationally recognised accord. Significantly, the timing of the Israeli act of disengagement was a pointer. It followed a strong appeal from the United States. In fact, it was only a day or so earlier that the soldiers of the Jewish state had reconquered the small but extremely volatile segment with an almost undisguised sense of military triumphalism. So, the latest ostensible act of de-escalation by the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Ariel Sharon, a self-confessed hawk, can be seen as a credible sign that the present Bush administration in Washington may be able to restrain him in the future as well. Yet, the predominant argument in Tel Aviv is that the guided retreat, which in itself was not caused by any Palestinian militant prowess, was also not the direct result of any undue diplomatic pressure from Washington. The question, therefore, is whether the Sharon administration is disinclined to let the U.S. set the peace agenda afresh in West Asia at precisely the juncture when Washington seems to have signalled substantive interest in the affairs of that region for the first time since the departure of Mr. Bill Clinton from the White House.

The U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, has surely appealed to the Palestinians as well to adopt a policy of restraint and rein in political terrorism directed against the Jewish state. Gen. Powell's statement, issued in the latest context of a Palestinian mortar-attack on a Jewish settlement and the Israeli retaliation, is conspicuous for its balanced diplomatic tone. Both the Palestinians and the Israelis have been reminded of their obligations under the agreements that they had reached during the Oslo process in the 1990s. However, it is particularly significant that Gen. Powell described the Israeli act of re-occupying Arab territory, now reversed, as an excessive and disproportionate response to the provocative Palestinian mortar-attack in focus. Moreover, the U.S. Secretary of State's blunt message to Israel is that it should not seek to unravel the agreement which it had previously entered into with the Palestinians. The totality of the circumstances of the latest Israeli pull-out from an enclave within Gaza signifies the political will of the U.S. to re-engage the West Asian players with a view to preventing the region from slipping into further anarchy.

The Bush administration is willing to facilitate not only a security dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians but also parleys aimed at addressing the differences between the two sides. By definition, a security dialogue is aimed at defusing the current tensions and scaling down the terrorist and other forms of violence. The terminology regarding the objective of narrowing ``differences'' should denote a more fundamental agenda of seeking a negotiated settlement about the political future of the region, in particular questions regarding Palestinian statehood and Israel's final status in a predominantly Arab milieu. Closely linked to such larger issues is the complication caused by Israel's latest air raid on Syrian positions in Lebanon as a stated retribution for an attack on an `outpost' of interest to the Jewish state by Hizbollah, a radical outfit linked to Damascus. Also ominous for peace are the Israeli assertion that the rules of the game (of brinkmanship) in West Asia are now changing and the Sharon administration's insistence that the Palestinian Authority rather than any individual Muslim guerrilla outfit was behind the mortar-attack that prompted the Jewish military re-occupation of a strategic enclave in Gaza.

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