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Iraq and Mid-East links

by Lynn Ockersz

US President George Bush has been quoted as saying that he would be pressing ahead for a negotiated settlement in the Middle East "after any war in Iraq," but the returning to power in Israel of the Likud bloc headed by Ariel Sharon points to how arduous this task could turn out to be.

Although Sharon has been quoted as saying that, "the people of Israel seek peace and I am convinced that for real peace there is a willingness for painful concessions," he has also gone on record as reiterating his position that the Palestinians engaged in the current uprising against Israel should stop "incitement and terror" and implement "deep democratic reforms," before the relaunching of negotiations.

Sharon's seeming ambivalence on some of the gut issues in the Middle East conflict points to the dilemmas continuing violence in that region pose for the Israeli State and perhaps those sections of the Israeli body-politic which would be wiling to give a negotiated political settlement a chance. On the one hand, they feel compelled to go along with those sections of the world community which are eager to forge ahead with a political settlement in the Middle East, and on the other, they need to confront the sad reality of continuing violence and counter-violence in the Middle Eastern theatre which are continuously bringing to the fore security issues and are aggravating existing hostile relations between hardline sections in the antagonistic camps in the tense Middle Eastern drama.

Not surprisingly, Sharon's Likud bloc coalition is believed to include opponents of a Palestinian state and those who firmly support a Jewish settlement policy in the disputed territories. This composition of the government proves the degree to which security concerns are dominating discussions on middle eastern policy in the Jewish state and point to the need for a cessation of hostilities in the region, for the opening of some space for a resumption of the Middle Eastern peace process. Right now, the scenario in the region is one of violence and counter-violence with their obvious implications for security perceptions on either side of the Middle-Eastern divide.

Both sides need to be encouraged to desist from violence to enable threat perceptions on both sides to abate. It is such an abatement of mutual hostilities which would lay the foundation for a resumption of the peace effort.

Besides these troubling posers, an issue of great importance is the credibility those sections of the West would enjoy in the eyes of the Middle Eastern antagonists, who are currently major players in the standoff with Iraq. Although the Palestinian Authority headed by President Yasser Arafat is currently being lambasted for the terror being visited on Israel, it is plain to see that the bulk of this security threat emanates from those hardline sections which are currently in confrontation with the West on a number of sensitive issues, including those of a cultural and even religious nature.

The September 11th horror in New York derived mainly from this deepening, to a great degree, global civilizational divide. The reaction of the US-led Western alliance to this tragedy, in particularly Afghanistan, and the West's current confrontation with Iraq has done nothing to soften this divide.

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