Trench war of angst in West Asia

THE ISRAELI LEADER, Mr. Ariel Sharon, has once again set a callous agenda in his trench warfare that is sustained by a strong undercurrent of emotional prejudices against the Palestinians. In the face of opposition by the United States, the Jewish nation's patron, Mr. Sharon says he will not renounce his plans for a systematic ``target killing'' of all suspected Palestinian purveyors of anti-Israel terror. For an ultra- nationalist hawk like him, a policy of liquidation is the amoral means to a political objective of reducing the fears of serial attacks on the Jews. Yet, it is Mr. Sharon's policy that the Palestinian extremists like the Hamas and others cite in justification of their terror campaign against the Jewish state. The latest Palestinian suicide-bombing at a pizzeria in Jerusalem has prompted Israel to launch reprisal air strikes and also seize a Palestinian political `headquarters' in the predominantly Arab segment of the city. Israel's dastardly retaliation has been denounced by major powers. Yet, calling upon the Palestinian leader, Mr. Yasser Arafat, to restrain the terrorists in these circumstances, the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, has urged both the Palestinian Authority and Israel to ``demonstrate foresight and responsibility''. The Jewish authorities had, in the first place, embarked upon missile strikes against the perceived chieftains of some Palestinian death squads. Mr. Arafat's nominal administration, too, made no secret of its refusal to rein in the proactive Palestinian-Hamas groups. The main thrust of the pan-Arab argument was that the presumptive squads of archetypal Palestinian anarchists had risen to resist the alleged reign of terror unleashed by the Jewish settlers living in illegal possession of enclaves that were already handed by Tel Aviv to the Authority under Mr. Arafat's control. It is against this psycho-politics of the region that the Palestinians have now stepped up their appeals to the U.S. to organise international monitors who might be able to dampen the spirit of the merchants of terror.

The U.S., on its part, is convinced that international monitors can play a useful role only if both Mr. Sharon and Mr. Arafat, instead of just the Palestinian leader, choose to requisition peace-sentinels. However, the ``Mitchell process'' is being unambiguously commended by the Bush administration, which only recently decided in a measured manner to revive the U.S.' role in promoting a settlement of the basic Jewish-Palestinian political dispute. The ``Mitchell process'', named after a former U.S. Senator who led a team that propounded a peace formula, consists of three sequential possibilities. A definitive period of truce is to be followed by efforts from both sides to build mutual trust and resume the stalled negotiations towards a final settlement. However, the truce, brokered by the U.S. last June, has already gone up in smoke. Yet, full-scale war as an alternative is plainly stupid.

The challenges of conventional diplomacy in a volatile region like West Asia cannot also be exaggerated. Witness the futile controversy sought to be raised by some Jewish opinion-makers through their condemnation of a United Nations observer team that supposedly failed to prevent the abduction of a few Israeli soldiers by the Arabist Hizbullah guerillas in the Lebanese sector last year. Israel should know that it is pointless blaming the international monitors, in this case some Indian soldiers on a U.N. assignment, for an incident that they were not mandated or armed to prevent. Yet, the relevance of the international community as a possible catalyst of a peaceful solution in West Asia is not in doubt. Arguably, the outlines of a possible Israeli-Palestinian settlement must encompass the spirit of compromise that was evident in the Oslo process of the 1990s. The Jews as also the Palestinians are entitled to sovereign states of their own on the basis of an agreed land-sharing.

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