New cross-currents in West Asia

A COLLECTIVE SHOW of political unity by the Arab states over the basic Palestinian question is their direct answer to Israel's act of sending F-16 combat aircraft on a bombing mission over a territory that had already been entrusted to the Palestinians under an earlier understanding. The decision by the Arab League Foreign Ministers to observe a political boycott of Israel is quite unusual even by the polemical standards of West Asia's prolonged diplomatic standoff between the Jewish state and its neighbours. On this occasion, the evocative mood of Arab solidarity has been made possible on this scale by a singular act of war-like rage by Israel's ultra-nationalist Prime Minister, Mr. Ariel Sharon. He ordered the U.S.-supplied F-16s to pound a security post within the perimeters of the acknowledged Palestinian territory. The raid, the first involving fighter planes in that sub-region for a number of years, was decreed in explicit retaliation for a suicide-bombing attack by an extremist Arab group inside the domain of the Jewish state. For the grisly record of cyclical West Asian terror, the Israeli air strike in question claimed far more Arab lives than the number of Jews killed in the earlier suicide-bombing. In the thinking of the protagonists of Mr. Sharon's show of force, therein lies the purported message that the Jewish state, which is widely believed to command an overwhelming military strength in the region, cannot be trifled with. The sub-text of the message is that retributive force will be used to subdue any escalatory militant move by the ``rebellious'' Palestinians - a Jewish label for those seeking legitimate political and civil rights.

Israel and its adjoining Arab territories have thus been turned into a battleground for theories of violence by the Jewish military supremacists as also the Palestinian votaries of unbridled angst. Almost inexorably lost as a result is the fragile peace process. The fading moves towards peace in West Asia were set in motion by the United States, in nominal conjunction with Russia (with its recessive influence of the Soviet vintage) and by Norway (as a facilitator) in the early 1990s. The peace process later reached its zenith at one stage during the presidency of Mr. Bill Clinton in the U.S. The prime diplomatic question now in West Asia is whether the present Bush administration in Washington will decide to play either a facilitator or a mediator or both in respect of at least the Israel-Palestine track of the layered peace process.

For the moment now, the U.S. is echoing the latest Mitchell Commission's report by counselling the Israelis and Palestinians to give up violence and discuss modalities of meeting their expectations of security before beginning `final status' talks to crack the political puzzle over full-fledged Palestinian statehood. The U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, has of course hinted at the possibility of a more activist diplomatic role by Washington if warranted. The U.S.-sponsored document deals with some of the issues at stake including Israel's practices of establishing and safeguarding controversial Jewish settlements. The report has in fast induced Mr. Sharon to float the idea of a truce. But Washington, which alone seems to possess the diplomatic wherewithal to make a positive difference to the current crisis in West Asia, must first sort out America's own priorities, given especially its perceived preoccupation with toppling Iraq's ruler, Mr. Saddam Hussein, in the same region. Assuming importance, as a result, is the scope for diplomatic intervention by Egypt and Jordan, two Arab states which variously made ``peace'' with Israel over time, in regard to the Palestine issue. However, the latest decision by the Arab League can only diminish the chances of a new Egypt-Jordan initiative. Both being privy to the League's move, their sense of indignation is the defining Arab mood today.

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