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Bernard Wasserstein: Peace is slouching to Jerusalem

Sunday 13 April 2003 00:00 BST
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Pax paritur bello (peace is produced by war): the Latin tag may sound Orwellian, but in the Middle East today it rings true. The fall of Baghdad could well be the catalyst for a resumption of the languishing Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Israelis have greeted the downfall of Saddam with relief. But they worry about what comes next. Hawks have been dreading the "day after" the end of the war, when they will be called to order by the Americans. That day is now at hand.

For most Palestinians the fall of Saddam is a bitter pill. Once again bombastic Arab rhetoric has been exposed as hollow. Once again Palestinians fear they will pay the price for the failure of Arab leaders who claim to be their champions. Yasser Arafat was a little more circumspect this time than in the first Gulf War, but his acclaim for the "martyrs" of Baghdad has not improved his standing in Washington. At home he is a much-diminished figure, challenged by Islamic militants, by an impatient younger generation in his own Fatah movement, and by pragmatic technocrats surrounding the new prime minister, Mahmud Abbas.

The Palestinians fear that President Bush's commitment to the "road-map" to peace is paper-thin and that he will succumb to Israeli attempts to redraw it, delay its implementation, or throw it out of the window. The Israelis, meanwhile, still hope to persuade Washington to amend the road-map that has been devised by the "Quartet" (the UN, EU, Russia, and the US). They demand, for example, that the reference to an independent Palestinian state by 2005 be changed to a state possessing "certain attributes of sovereignty". But the plan is unlikely to be changed. The Palestinians are supposed to rein in their wild men and streamline their administration. The Israelis must withdraw from areas of the West Bank and Gaza reoccupied since September 2000 and halt expansion of settlements in the occupied territories. The US will not impose the road-map on Israel, but will lean heavily on the government to comply.

Both Israeli hopes and Palestinian fears are exaggerated. Realisation of the objectives set out in the road-map is in the US's interest and the administration has made clear it is serious about moving ahead with it. Even Paul Wolfowitz – the hawkish Pentagon Deputy Secretary and darling of the Israeli lobby in Washington – told a Senate committee on Thursday that progress on the map "is going to help us enormously in our overall posture in the Arab world, indeed in the Muslim world and the whole war on terrorism".

Tony Blair has lately taken to comparing the Israeli-Palestinian struggle to Northern Ireland. He seems to hope for a second coming of the Good Friday agreement in the Holy Land. Some Israelis draw unfortunate lessons from this analogy.

Nevertheless, both Israelis and Palestinians are tiring of endless, hopeless sub-war. Abu Mazen, the recently appointed Palestinian Prime Minister, has boldly nailed a white flag to the mast and called for an "end to military operations in all forms, totally and not partially". The Israeli security establishment is divided about the success of its anti-terrorist campaign. Official spokesmen point to the decline in Israeli casualties in past weeks. But one senior Israeli security figure, speaking privately the other day, said: "Israel is winning the battle against terrorism. But if we continue with this kind of success, the future will be very bleak. Because the kind of security regime we would need to put in place would lead to so much suffering and alienation that it would destroy any basis for productive coexistence with the Palestinians."

Last week former US secretary of state James Baker declared this a moment of opportunity for renewal of the peace process. He it was who, in the aftermath of the first Gulf War in 1991, succeeded in convening the Madrid Conference that formally opened the first direct Israeli-Palestinian talks. If, as Mr Blair hopes, the second Gulf War yields a genuine peace dividend for Israel and Palestine, even George Galloway and other critics of the war will concede that the toppling of Saddam has brought some tangible benefit.

Bernard Wasserstein is Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow and the author of 'Israel and Palestine: Why They Fight and Can They Stop?' (Profile Books)

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