THE heroic struggle of the people of the occupied Palestinian territory entered a new — and perhaps — decisive phase known as Intifada II which completed its two turbulent years on September 28.

The Palestinians suspended the Intifada I in response to the peace initiative launched by the international community at Madrid. It was seen as the continuation of the 1973 Geneva conference jointly chaired by the US and the Soviet Union.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Gorbachev gave up his role of a peace-maker in favour of George Bush Sr. The Geneva mechanism was the outcome of the 1973 Security Council Resolution 338, calling for immediate cessation of hostilities concurrently with the resumption of peace talks.

This resolution was the product of American-Soviet talks in Moscow aimed at bringing an end to the fourth Arab-Israel war in which the Arab states had used oil as a weapon to neutralize the European Community and isolate the US and Israel.

Thus, the 1973 war marked a watershed in the Middle East, in that the European community abandoned its traditional pro-Israel stance. That was indeed a great gain made by the Arab oil diplomacy. Arabs could still exercise some moderating influence on the America’s partisan policy towards Israel by playing oil card.

But the oil-rich Arab potentates are so scared of the bellicose Bush administration that instead of resorting to oil embargo to counter the US veto or its planned invasion of Iraq, they rush to Washington to assure it that they had no such intentions. By renouncing oil as a weapon, all that is left in the armoury of Arabs is empty rhetoric followed by obeisance.

With the abandonment of the Palestinian cause by Arab rulers since the 1978 Camp David Accords, the Palestinians had to chart out their own course without expectations of any material support from the twenty Arab states. Intifada I was a spontaneous mass uprising of the people of the occupied West Bank and Gaza against the Israeli oppression and the apathy of the world powers towards their cause. It was a peaceful and non-violent protest against settlement-building and persecution. Israeli authorities resorted to indiscriminate firing against the stone-throwing street boys.

Israel found that it was at war with the whole population. The unarmed Palestinians began counting their dead whose number rose to 1,000 while the Israeli fatalities during the Intifada I were few and far between. But the Intifada II must have been an eye-opener to Israelis who suffered several hundred fatalities, including those of their armed forces. This time the Palestinians fired back rockets at Israeli tanks and the suicide bombers struck deep inside Israel at its military and economic installations.

When the Palestinian Liberation Organization called off Intifada in 1991 in order to participate in the peace talks, it was acclaimed by the international community as an act of political courage, and the renunciation of violence as a means for achieving its desired goal. The history of national liberation is replete with interludes of peace and negotiations between the guerillas and the occupying powers. A series of peace accords ranging from Oslo to Sharm al Shaikh, Al Khalil and Wye River agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) brought the latter into the mainstream of international diplomacy, enhancing the status of the hitherto guerilla organization to that of a full-fledged government with worldwide recognition.

In 1996, the PLO won elections with a thumping majority, isolating the hard-lining Hamas and others. Now Israel had to reckon with not only the resistance movement but a state-like entity, the Palestinian Authority, enjoying legitimacy in international law.

In case of differences arising from the accords, the Palestinian Authority and Israel were hard put to it to sort them out at the negotiating table rather than on the battlefield. If the international community sets any store by the numerous Security Council and UN General Assembly resolutions on Palestine, Israel would stand condemned as an outlaw, having violated about fifty UN resolutions and international conventions.

Finding itself on the spot, Israel desperately seeks to take the dispute from the negotiating table to the battlefield by raising the bogey of terrorism. Ariel Sharon from day one was opposed to the Oslo peace process and won the elections on that platform. While still in opposition, he, accompanied by 1000 troops, entered the holy city of Al Quds to perform the ancient Jewish ritual at the Wailing Wall, provoking angry protest from the native Palestinians.

It was a deliberate act aimed at sabotaging the peace process since the Israeli-PA negotiations had run into snags over the substantive issues such as the status of the holy city, the return of the Palestinian diaspora and the Jewish settlements.

Amazingly, these issues, which were central to the dispute, were not addressed at all by the string of peace accords signed from time to time between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. For this the Palestinian opposition denounced the peace accords as a sell-out by Arafat. President Clinton tried his best to salvage the peace process but by then he had become a lame duck. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority got embroiled on two fronts with Israel and the Palestinian opposition.

The Israelis accuse Yasser Arafat of unreliability since he has failed to stamp out the Intifida while the resistance leaders denounce the Palestinian leader of betrayal. Ariel Sharon, backed by George Bush, pushed the moderate Palestinian leader to the wall and publicly demanded his elimination from the Palestinian scene and started looking for some alternative in the rank and file of the PLO.

To further erode the status of the Palestinian Authority, Ariel Sharon launched a full-scale invasion of the self-ruled Palestinian territory on March 29 and occupied all the cities and put them under blanket curfew. The Israeli invaders razed the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority president at Ramallah to the ground, cut off water, ration, electricity and communications. This left Arafat on a starving menu of a potato and a cup of coffee a day — reminiscent of the days of the 1982 siege of Beirut. For five weeks the Israeli troops bombed the Palestinian cities, deploying F-16s and Apache helicopters and shelled the residential areas with tank fire and demolished the homes of ‘suspects’ with armoured bulldozers.

In the meantime the Security Council’s call for immediate troops withdrawal fell on deaf ears. It was not until after the conclusion of a deal for transferring six alleged militants to international custody that Israel withdrew its forces from the Palestinian cities.

After six weeks of lull, the suicide bomb attacks in Umm al Fahm and Tel Aviv on September 18 and 19 gave Ariel Sharon a pretext for invasion and reoccupation of the Palestinian cities. It was an action replay of the March expedition. Again, Arafat’s headquarters were demolished with the Palestinian leader confined to the only safe building of his office with twenty of his security and intelligence personnel and 250 others.

Sharon first demanded the handing over by Arafat of twenty men and now demand 41 and expulsion of 250. The Palestinian leader turned down the ultimatum but in the meantime the Security Council passed a resolution on September 24 calling for an immediate Israeli troop withdrawal from the Palestinian cities and an end to violence by both sides. It further enjoined Israel to comply with the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilian persons. Israel had earlier rejected the council resolution but on US pressure lifted the siege only from Arafat’s headquarters.

It has not withdrawn its troops from the Palestinian cities as required by the Security Council resolution. The Security Council, and especially the US, should now force Israel to comply with all of its resolutions mentioned in that body’s September 24 ruling.

ON September 11, the world marked the anniversary of perhaps the most fateful day since World War II. What stands out since then is the emerging tussle between those who want to base the future on a unilateral, uncoordinated use of power, and those who wish to preserve the advances made in managing a complex world according to shared principles that emerged from years of conflict and destruction.

At the heart of the dilemma lies the temptation to impose concepts rooted in the acquisition of unprecedented power — political, economic and military — by the US. Throughout recorded history, mankind has experienced the rise of various powers at different times, through a combination of military power exercised in combination with civilizational advances. Gifted individuals played a role in launching this move towards empire-building and domination. Either countervailing forces rose up to challenge such hegemony or internal decay and dissension brought about the fall of these powers.

One can recall the rise of Greek and Roman civilizations and empires in Europe in ancient times, and the expansion and power achieved by the Arabs and Ottomans in Asia and Africa in the Middle Ages. The modern age began with the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution, resulting in the growth of European empires that dominated the entire globe for three centuries, till the process of decolonization that followed World War II transformed the world again in the second half of the 20th century.

Among the major trends that were inherited from the 20th century, several stand out as defining the direction of human evolution in the new century and millennium. The two world wars underlined the need for some international arrangement to resolve disputes peacefully — a need that became compelling after the advent of nuclear weapons at the close of World War II. The earlier experiment of the League of Nations having proved to be a failure, the creation of the United Nations was visualized as offering the best hope for ridding the globe of the scourge of war.

In actual fact, that ideal was not achieved, but the existence of the UN did make a great deal of difference to the way human society evolved and dealt with a wide range of challenges. A Third World War was avoided, and the UN achieved great successes in the economic, social and humanitarian spheres. The post-World War II world was dominated by the cold war between the US and the Soviet Union whose rivalries were driven by their fierce adherence to competing models of human governance — the capitalist and communist systems. The two superpowers virtually divided the world into their spheres of influence, and developed weapons of mass destruction that could destroy the world many times over. While a direct conflict between them was averted — a process in which the UN played a key role — they did fight proxy wars.

The most important of these were the one in Vietnam, which the US lost in 1975, and a decisive one in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in which the defeat and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union were followed by the emergence of the US as the sole superpower. Communism was deemed to have failed as a viable model of governance and the western systems of political democracy and market-based economy emerged as the global norm.

The role of the US as the sole superpower since 1989 has acquired greater relevance to emerging global trends on account of the resolve of the US political and economic elite to maintain their hegemony. The Gulf War of 1991 saw the US re-establish its presence in the Middle East, partly to secure assured access to energy resources, but also to underpin the security of Israel, America’s regional pro-consul. The post-cold war vision of a new world order, articulated by the elder Bush, was aimed at rallying the world on the eve of the war against Iraq.

It is worth recalling that both the conservative Arab states and the western powers had encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Iran in 1980, with the expectation that the Islamic revolution there might be undone. Despite Iraq’s resort to chemical weapons and missiles, that war reinforced the Iranian revolution by promoting internal unity in the face of the external threat.

Though the US-led coalition had the potential to topple Saddam Hussein in 1991, he was deliberately spared to play the role of containing Iran, which might have taken the advantage of a power vacuum in Iraq to extend its influence over that country with the support of the Shiite majority there.

The elder Bush pursued policies in the region that, while consolidating the US military control, also catered to Arab sensitivities by initiating the Middle East peace process. When he stood as the Republican candidate for re-election in 1992, the main achievements of his presidency were perceived to be in the domain of foreign policy, topped of by the US victory in the cold war in 1989 and in the Gulf War in 1991.

By that time, the attention of US public opinion had shifted to the domestic agenda, and the need to revive the economy. That ensured Clinton’s victory, which was followed by the initiation of successful strategies to address the internal agenda, with foreign policy relegated to a secondary place.

It was mainly in his second term that Clinton rose to the challenges posed by the crises in Yugoslavia and the Middle East. Clinton also showed awareness of a new global agenda as the twentieth century was coming to an end, paying close attention to the problems of the environment and of other rising concerns related to drugs and terrorism. The US activism in Clinton’s second term achieved significant results in the Balkans as well as the Middle East. In keeping with the tradition dating back to 1945, the US policies laid due stress on a multilateral approach, with the UN accorded a significant role.

A notable feature of the Clinton years was the recognition of South Asia as a region containing political challenges and economic opportunities. The nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan in May 1998 served to highlight the need to address the Kashmir issue, that could spark a nuclear conflict, though the US also took a calculated decision to build up a strategic partnership with India, for three main reasons. These were the shared perception of a potential challenge from the Muslim world, the size of the Indian market and India’s potential role in the containment of China.

The bipartisan tradition in foreign policy-making remained the norm until the younger Bush was elected President in 2000. A balance was also maintained between power and principles, and the US foreign policy establishment attached importance to playing its leadership role with due regard for the sensitivities of major global and regional players, as well as for the multilateral institutions and agreements in place. when President George W. Bush was elected in a close contest in 2000, apprehensions were expressed about his being under the influence of persons who believed that the role of the US should reflect its overwhelming power.

The unilateralist approach to foreign policy adopted by Bush since 2001 has been marked by reliance on the unchallengeable military superiority of the US which is to be further enhanced through Ballistic Missile Defence.

Bush has gone down the unilateralist road a considerable distance, arousing international concerns by repudiating the Kyoto Accord on the environment, and launching the National Missile Defence in May 2001. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 made a multilateral approach to this menace imperative. However, in the war declared on terrorism, Bush has found additional justification for taking preventive unilateral action.

The stand taken in the Nuclear Posture Review, and the right to take pre-emptive action announced at West Point last June have increased concerns that the US may launch military action disregarding the mechanisms that are available for peaceful solutions, such as the UN itself. Such is the influence enjoyed by the hawks around him that Bush has made what Ambassador Richard Holbrooke calls “a radical break with the 55-year bipartisan tradition in foreign policy making.” It appears that the attack on Iraq has already been decided which would have far-reaching consequences not only for the region and the Arab and Islamic countries, but also for the entire UN system.

The decision announced by President Bush in his address to the UN General Assembly on September 12, to seek the backing of the Security Council in monitoring the war-making capabilities of Iraq represent a welcome recognition of the need to forgo a unilateralist approach. However, the preparations set in motion for an all-out resort to force against Iraq, where the US goals also include a regime change clearly indicate that the broad Bush agenda has not really changed. The rhetoric used on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attack and the policy of maintaining total US military superiority, as well as of backing the Ariel Sharon approach, cannot but remain a source of serious concern.

The tendency in the US for excessive reliance on force, in pursuit of goals not coordinated with the international community, and not always based on respect for the principles of the UN charter threaten to plunge the world into chaos and turmoil. Most worrisome for our region are the signs that there is a misperception of the Muslim world in Washington, with Zionists and the Christian right exercising a great deal of influence.