- The Observer,
- Sunday April 7 2002
The tragedy unfolding on the West Bank sets two legitimate aims in irredeemable conflict. Israel has the right to pursue the terrorists who have subverted its daily life with fear. Palestinians have the right to pursue statehood, an aspiration now endorsed by the international community, including the US. But Israel does not have the right to carry its offensive to the point of re-conquest, any more than Palestinians have the right to blow up innocent people going about their daily business. Arafat may have equivocated about terror, saying one thing to the world and another to his people. But Sharon is relentlessly destroying the means by which Arafat might exercise any authority at all.
If the Sharon government does not desist, what then? Increasingly, an imposed settlement looks the only way ahead. It would have to be endorsed by the United Nations but only the US has the leverage and influence on Israel to require that. That will demand more explicit statements from Bush. But the President has another incentive: his credibility, and that of a muddled foreign policy, are on the line.
As the President and Tony Blair contemplate military action against Iraq this weekend, they should remember that the doctrine of unilateralism currently espoused by White House hawks has no place in a future world order. Any action against Saddam Hussein, who no doubt regards the bounty Iraq is paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers as money well spent, will still have to be justified by evidence. It will also require specific endorsement by the UN if it is not to cause the Prime Minister the most serious political difficulty, with his Cabinet colleagues, the Left in his party, and with British public opinion at large.
