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by Lynn Ockersz

Not surprisingly, most of the world is stunned by a comment attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that he regrets having not ordered the killing of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat twenty years ago, at the height of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Palestinian Minister Saeb Erakat may have been echoing the sentiments of this deeply perturbed section of world opinion when he said that the comment "means he (Sharon) still wants to kill him now, and shows the mindset of a mafioso and a guerrilla rather than of a Prime Minister".

Certainly, the policy of physically eliminating or assassinating one's political adversaries is profoundly alien to the spirit of democracy and the Israeli Prime Minister's observation could be taken as proof that he is still of a militarist mindset - a frame of mind that favours violent solutions to problems of a political nature.

It should be recalled that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon occurred in mid-1982, at the height of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities. Ariel Sharon - at that time the Israeli Defence Minister - was considered the master-mind behind this military operation which reportedly also triggered a number of excesses against Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon.

This invasion, of course, didn't help Israel in any way because it was nearly a decade later that the Oslo peace process was launched, which brought the Israelis and the Palestinians to the negotiating table for a while. In the interim, Israel didn't have peace.

Violence merely prolonged the conflict.

Going by the Israeli Prime Minister's current approach to resolving the conflict, as indicated by his comment on the elimination of Arafat, hardline attitudes seem to have changed very little at the upper reaches of the Israeli political establishment, from those times when war was seen as the only option available to them. Admittedly, grave provocative acts are being committed by Arab extremist groups against the Israeli state and its people.

The current spiral of violence has, to a considerable extent, been triggered by hardliners on both sides of the Middle East divide. However, an unalloyed militarist approach to resolving the conflict could hardly be expected of the Israeli political leadership, which the world expects to be a partner in the current efforts to revive the peace process.

Israeli hardline opinion may be perceiving Arafat as both conciliatory towards and ineffective against Arab extremist outfits which are currently targeting even Israeli civilians, but Arafat represents Palestinian moderate opinion on the conflict. for some time now, he has preferred the path of negotiations to waging a wasting war against the Israeli state.

The crying need is to strengthen his hands rather than prefer his elimination. All hopes of arriving at a negotiated political solution of the Mid-East conflict would be lost if Arafat is killed or his authority undermined.

The Israeli political leadership would do well to ensure his political survival. Sharon's comment is likely to prove embarrassing to the US, which is currently marshalling forces worldwide to fight global terrorism.

Political assassination is synonymous with terrorism, and the Israeli Premier has gone on record as regretting he didn't order the killing of Arafat in 1982.

How could the US, now, take a bold moral stand against terror, when a leader of Israel, a state which has been backed by it, adopts a terroristic stance on the Palestinian President?

Fortunately, the European Union has expressed regret at Sharon's comment and has called for a conciliatory approach at this make or break stage of the Middle-East peace effort.

The Western case against Osama bin Laden is likely to be undermined if it is detected as adopting double standards on terror.

In as much as pressure should be brought on Arafat to do his utmost to quell violent acts against the Israeli state, the Israeli leadership should be brought round to the view by the US, that there is no alternative to a political settlement to the Mid-East problem.

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