THE ghastly assassination of former Lebanese prime minister and billionaire businessman, Rafik Hariri, and the outrage it prompted has set in train or hastened dramatic changes in the political setup in Lebanon. These changes have precipitated, or at least acted as a catalyst for, not only changes in the Syria-Lebanon relationship but within Syria’s own body politic.

This, in turn, will affect not only the relationship of the Levant with the rest of the Middle East, but may well change the nature of the politics within the region, and in all likelihood, in many parts of the Islamic world. This may seem too sweeping a conclusion to draw from the tragic event in Beirut but much that has happened since seems to bear it out.

Two weeks after the February 14 bomb blast killed Hariri, Prime Minister Omar Karami felt compelled to resign despite the fact that he clearly enjoyed a majority in parliament. It was the same parliament that had, under Syrian pressure, extended the term of President Lahoud and brought about Hariri’s resignation a few months earlier. The resignation came apparently because of the outrage of the Lebanese people, or at least one section of the people, which brought large crowds on to the streets of Beirut and had the streets echoing with allegations that Karami’s government and Syrian intelligence were behind the assassination.

On March 9, however, just a week or so after his resignation the prime minister was literally voted back in office when some 70 of the 78 legislators who met President Lahoud asked for his reappointment. This followed a day after Hezbollah — that represents the Shia plurality in Lebanon, was the principal instrument in securing Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and is viewed as a supporter of Syria — mounted a demonstration of more than half a million people easily dwarfing all the anti-Syria and anti-government demonstrations held in Beirut’s Martyr’s Square earlier, and leaving no one in any doubt about the political support that the Hezbollah could muster.

Was one the direct consequence of the other? Possibly not. The Hezbollah leader speaking to reporters two days before the massive demonstration of the Hezbollah’s strength seemed to make it clear that it would be demonstrating against foreign interference in Lebanon and not opposing Syrian withdrawal, even while wanting the Lebanese to acknowledge the debt they owed to Syria.

More importantly, the Hezbollah wanted that the Syrian withdrawal should be seen as an implementation of the Taif agreement of 1989 rather than the UN Security Council Resolution 1559, passed last year with joint US and French sponsorship, which called for the complete withdrawal of Syrian forces and the rapid disarming of the Hezbollah.

Under the Taif agreement which brought the long running civil war in Lebanon to an end, the Syrians agreed to withdraw their forces from the rest of Lebanon into the Bekaa Valley within two years and thereafter hold negotiations with the Lebanese agreement on a complete withdrawal. This agreement also permitted the Hezbollah to retain its arsenal to fight the Israelis who at that time continued to occupy parts of southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah leader Nasrullah criticized the Egyptians and Saudis for advising Syria to adhere to the strict requirements of the Security Council resolution stating that this US demand was a photocopy of the Israeli demand.

Hezbollah was formed in the early 1980s with Iranian support and won itself a broad measure of support among the Lebanese Shias, who form the plurality of Lebanon’s population, by providing a broad range of social services in the impoverished areas of Lebanon. Their real claim to support within Lebanon’s broader population, however, flowed from their armed resistance to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

The party was credited with having secured Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and for continuing to maintain pressure on Israel with regard to the disputed Sheba farms on the Israel-Lebanon border. Its ties with Syrian grew in part from the fact that Syria acted as the conduit for the assistance Hezbollah received from Iran and in part from the fact that Syria found Hezbollah’s resistance against Israel a useful tool to protect its own borders against Israel.

Hezbollah under Syrian patronage was allowed to retain its arms and wage its battle against Israel when under the Taif agreement all other militias in Lebanon were made to disarm.

But now the indications are that the shrewd leaders of the Hezbollah are positioning themselves to be part of the Lebanese polity rather than the surrogates of foreign forces. Even today, as a registered political party, they have a bloc of 12/13 seats in the 128 member Lebanese legislature. The problem is that their transformation from an organization dedicated to attacks on Israel has evolved only to the point where they regard themselves as the guardians of South Lebanon against Israel. More time would perhaps be needed before they become a Lebanese political party with no militant wing.

Omar Karami, who resigned recently, is expected to form a government of national unity and to hold the reins of power till the parliamentary elections in May. There are little prospects of success of his government but even if he succeeds, uncertainty prevails about the future political setup. Although the big Anti-Syria rally in Beirut on Monday apparently rivalled the size of the Hezbollah demonstration of March 8, it also highlighted the growing polarization within the country.

From the American perspective the Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. It is blamed for the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut and for other attacks on American targets. The Americans made every effort to have the Europeans also declare the Hezbollah a terrorist organization but failed in the face of French and other opposition.

Now it seems that the Americans are changing tack. They now say that even while they continue to regard the Hezbollah as a terrorist organization they will not stand in the way of Hezbollah’s participation in the Lebanese parliamentary elections nor would they insist on its immediate disarming.

The priority is to get the Syrians out of Lebanon so that the parliamentary elections can be held without foreign interference. In fact, Condoleeza Rice’s statements seem to suggest that the United States expects the Hezbollah to do well in the elections and entertains the hope that once the Hezbollah comes to power it will modify its policies. “Very often,” she said in a recent interview, “elections themselves have a changing impact on people and on the balance of forces.”

She went on to add that “in the long run you can’t have a democratic society and a society based on rule of law where you have groups or organizations that are committed to violence outside of that framework”, but for the Hezbollah it is a clear indication that the Americans will not stand in the way of the Hezbollah scoring an election victory. Such statements may be found somewhat reassuring by some members of the Hezbollah but most will continue to believe that the eventual objective of the Americans will be the destruction of the Hezbollah and their political activities will be conditioned by this conviction.

After having failed to implement the Taif agreement for some 16 years, Syria’s President Bashar Assad, first termed as the “young leader” when he took over the reins of power after his father’s death five years ago and now termed the “weak leader” has promised the UN envoy that he would withdraw his forces from Lebanon. According to the agreement, one-third of all Syrian forces and intelligence agents would return to Syria while the remaining would be moved to the Bekaa valley by the end of March. The timetable for the return of the forces moved into the Bekaa valley would be determined in a meeting of the Lebanese and Syrian leaders on April 7. Bashar Assad has agreed to this not only because of the demonstrations in Beirut or the unrelenting American pressure but because such Arab countries as Egypt and Saudi Arabia have asked him to do so.

Will he survive the domestic turmoil that is bound to ensue? Will he be able to resist the next set of American demands which would relate to the closing of the offices of the Palestinian groups in Syria and the dismantling of the alleged Iraqi Baathist network that the Americans believe is financing and directing the insurgency in Iraq? Will he be able to resist demands for reaching a settlement with Israel on a peace treaty?

The Egyptians and Saudis both pressured Syria to implement the UN Security Council resolution. Partly this may have been driven by the fact that Hariri’s assassination and the support from Syria’s minority Allawite regime to the Shias in Lebanon aroused fears that the Sunnis in Lebanon would be marginalized just as happened to the Sunnis in Iraq. In doing so, however, they were also weakening Bashar Assad’s ability to retain power in Syria and perhaps undermining Syria’s ability to seek a just settlement with Israel. They must have calculated, moreover, that this could bring down the Bashar regime and if so this could have unintended consequences.

The most important question is how the Syrian withdrawal can affect Lebanon’s internal polity. The sectarian differences in Lebanon run deep. The confessional system under which the president is a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of the parliament a Shia is patently unjust given the fact that the Shias are the plurality in the country.

If the Hezbollah sheds its Syrian and Iranian connections and becomes a nationalist party one of the first demands that it is likely to make is that the power structure in Lebanon should more accurately reflect the demographic reality.

How will that be done? The confessional system was introduced by the French as a way of giving the minority Maronite Christians a dominant role in Lebanese society. Will they and other western powers stand by and let the Shias assert themselves? Will the Maronite Christians be prepared to see a diminution in their influence? Will the wary coexistence between the Sunni, Shia, Christian and Druze continue or will there be a return to the civil war fought on sectarian lines that tore Lebanon apart from 1975 to 1990? Is there any guarantee that this will not happen?

The Lebanese army, even while it numbers 72,000, cannot provide a safeguard against such sectarian strife. The Americans indicate that they are aware of the need for the international community to fill the vacuum which will be created by the Syrian withdrawal but at the same time reports state that the Americans are opposed to the expansion of the UN force in Lebanon.

The ordinary Lebanese are apprehensive. According to one report the AK-47 rifle (the kalashnikov) which used to cost about a $100 on the streets of Beirut now costs $700. It seems that the Lebanese while hoping for the best are preparing for the worst.

IT was some time in the early nineties when the high commissioner for New Zealand in Islamabad said, while launching a book his mission had funded, that the coming decade would be the age of information.

Those were days when information technology had barely picked up in this country, cell phones were a rarity and a status symbol of the elite, only the CNN had started its round the clock worldwide channel and not many knew about the wonders of the Internet. But the high commissioner’s words were prophetic.

Today, it takes no time at all for news and information to travel from one end of the globe to the other. E-mails, satellite television, modern phone services equipped with cameras and the worldwide web have made the world a global village. Communication has enabled people to cross boundaries with ease and has broken down cultural and language barriers. This has brought people closer and promoted greater interaction between them than has ever happened before in human history.

Technology has also changed the shape of the media. It is now more interactive. Viewers can ring in to ask questions on talk shows and the Internet allows people to send in their feedback instantaneously, without much of a hassle. Anyone can, making a small payment, set up a website which can be accessed by anyone. These are positive developments because they have stimulated human interest in information.

But this also has its flip side. Communication technology has led to an overload of information — an information explosion as one may say. The worst part is that embedded in the information is a massive load of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. With so much information floating around, most people now have no time to absorb it, think about it, evaluate it, sift out the grain from the chaff and then accept only what seems plausibe. Instead, the media has emerged as a dangerous tool.

The media is now doing more than just providing the news. It is virtually playing the role of an actor in international and domestic affairs. Until the information age was ushered in with a bang, those who could use the media — at least in Pakistan — were a selected few. Of course, the government was the key user, and unfortunately, by gagging the press and controlling radio and television it exploited the media to project its own point of view, suppress the oppositions voice and manipulate public opinion. Now, the reverse is possible. The government has lost its monopoly over the media, thanks to the technology which has made it difficult to control the various channels through which information comes in. Moreover, a new trend has set in internationally. Live and continuous television coverage has empowered the media. It is influencing the decision-makers quite profoundly and decisively.

Stephen Hess and Marvin Kalb write in their book The Media and the War on Terrorism about the “CNN effect” (a term now applied for all television channels), “In 1992, President George H.W. Bush saw television images of starving children in Somalia and he felt obliged to send US troops there to distribute food.” They add, “Less than a year, later President Bill Clinton saw television images of Somali fighters dragging the desecrated body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu and he felt obliged to withdraw the troops.”

With more serious implications has been the media’s propensity to project an image which may actually misrepresent the truth. The images could be positive or negative, but not accurate. John Simpson, a BBC correspondent, has disclosed in his book News from No Man’s Land that the anti-American demonstrations in Peshawar, after 9/11 and the fall of the Taliban in Kabul, were actually not as violent and angry as the television pictures made them out to be. He feels that this distortion has reinforced the “wrong-headed and shallow paranoia” of the West vis-a-vis Islam.

Small wonder then, that President Musharraf’s government has become overly mindful about projecting the “softer image” of Pakistan. The general belief seems to be that if you paint a rosy picture of the country and push all the unpleasant aspects of life under the carpet, all will be well. That would explain why advertisements were placed by the federal ministry of information and broadcasting in some English language newspapers last week stating that it was looking for “seasoned professionals” in evolving a “soft image of Pakistan”.

A beginning has already been made. Various government departments, especially those which do not have good reputation, such as NAB, have already appointed such consultants. The government also imported a host of journalists from abroad for Expo 2005, assigned officers from the ministry of information in Islamabad to act as escorts to their media guests in Karachi, fed them with information of the “soft image” of Pakistan and sent them home. Lo and behold, the foreign media (albeit not the top newspapers which had their credibility to guard) was flooded with stories giving only one side of the picture in Pakistan. Good they didn’t see the traffic jams the Expo caused. When it was pointed out to one television representative looking for the soft image that there is a bleak side too, she said that what she was doing is not journalism.

This is an age when the role of the media is changing. What is disturbing is that the lines between information, misinformation and disinformation are becoming blurred. As a result, many unscrupulous people are using the media, especially the Internet, to spread a host of lies. Since there is no professional check — an editor for websites, a code of ethics for television and radio — just about anyone can acquire a medium and put anything up there. All the information so released becomes an article of faith because it has been well presented and is believed by the gullible reader/viewer/listener.

Here, one example would suffice. A lot of noise is being made through the web about “a questionnaire the Aga Khan University Examination Board has distributed among students”. Newspaper editors have been receiving e-mails quoting some of the questions designed to alarm parents and malign the Aga Khan University. The fact, as this writer has investigated, is something different.

First of all, the e-mails are sent from hotmail addresses and when one writes to them, one does not receive a reply — a sure indication that it is a hoax.

Secondly, on obtaining the original questionnaire, it was found that it was a “Youth Health Survey” developed by the Global Fund, the government of Pakistan (health ministry) and the Aga Khan Foundation (something quite different from the AKU).

Thirdly, the questionnaire does not contain even one of the obscene questions listed in the email. The quality of English should itself discredit the authenticity of the report. Yet this bit of disinformation is being widely accepted and forms the basis of the attack by the religious extremist groups which have mounted the campaign against the Aga Khan Examination Board. So blinded are the people who want to believe the disinformation, that when they saw a television programme on the PTV in which Dr Shams Kassim Lakha said that the Examination Board had not distributed the questionnaire, a particular viewer insisted that he had heard Dr Lakha saying that the questionnaire should not have been distributed.

In fact, if anything, the questionnaire issued by the Global Fund is a very sensible one, keeps our cultural sensitivities in mind and is one which should be filled in by every class IX and X student in every school in the country.

What, however, is not clear is why the soft image pioneers don’t react firmly when such disinformation is dished out. Is it because it has in the past used the disinformation mode to propagate its own point of view or defend itself? Is it because disinformation will be used to create a soft image of the country? One hopes not, for Pakistan does have many many plus points, and one cannot sweep many many of its vices under the carpet. As for the government’s responsibility to refute disinformation, it must like Caesar’s wife be above suspicion.

NO one can say we are not innovative, or even inventive, where the English language is concerned, as I had occasion to point out some months ago. It does not matter if, as a nation, we don’t have any great scientific or technological ingenuity to show. Those of us who write for the English newspapers make up that deficiency by forging new idioms and new expressions, and even coining new words.

I shall not try to recount our splendid performance in this field because I do not want the English-speaking foreign community in Pakistan to feel small if they have failed to make any contribution in this regard. The trouble is that the well-educated British are taught to be wary of cliches, while our inventiveness has mostly been in this genre. Our government leaders are particularly fond of them and believe that, in the absence of solid achievements, the people are well beguiled with cliches and platitudes.

The British in Pakistan are, therefore, not driven by the desire to add to the existing storehouse of cliches, and may even be chary of using those that are already part of their language. On the other hand, we go on designing new ones, and we then see to it that they don’t go out of use.

Perhaps one of the greatest of our home-made cliches — launched and kept afloat by journalism — is the set of seven words “and remained with him for some time.” This is invariably used when a prominent personality from abroad calls on the president or the prime minister. Some reporters also employ it when these VIPs call on lesser personages, but I am sure the inventor would frown on liberty being taken with his product through this indiscriminate use.

I have questioned many journalists who employ this set of words every day. These newsmen are basically from the two news agencies and state-run radio and television. I wanted to find out why they do so. Why do they have to say that the visiting VIP “remained” with the president or head of government “for some time.”

Their explanation is simple, reasonable and perfectly valid and throws new light on some hitherto unexplained nuances of press reporting. They contend that unless these words are used the impression might be created that after making the formal call the distinguished visitor did not come back and stayed on indefinitely.

I had to agree that such an impression would not do. Apart from causing worry to the friendly foreign government involved, the public would be well within its rights to ask what had happened to the visitor and what he was doing in the President’s House or in the office of the prime minister all the time. The situation would become all the more mystifying the next day when the same VIP would be found making more calls, say on the Senate Chairman or the National Assembly Speaker, without having come back from his visit to the head of state or the chief executive.

There is another cliche attached to the stories of “call on” as they are referred to in official protocol circles. And that is, “They discussed matters of mutual interest.”

Again when I asked the reporters concerned why they have to use this phrase half a dozen times every day, they put me a counter-question. They asked, “Then what shall we say they discussed?” They surely caught me on the wrong foot.

There is a story behind the set of words “and remained with him for some time.” Long ago, probably in the mid-sixties, Qazi Ahmed Saeed of Radio Pakistan was press secretary to President Ayub.

On a visit to Lahore the president took time out to meet a local politician of some importance. When the president was flying back to Islamabad the pressmen at the airport got after Qazi Saeed to give them some details of the meeting. This he was unable to do as he didn’t know anything himself.

So they asked him to tell them at least how long the meeting lasted. This information is considered vital in political reporting as it gives some idea of its significance.

Cornered by the reporters, Qazi had a brainwave and said, “You can say he was with the President for some time.” This was the beginning of this senseless phrase to which its equally senseless popularity gave it historical status.

Nearly forty years have passed but the seven words have not lost their shine and utility. Day in and out they are rubbed in by the journalists without even pausing to give thought to what they are saying when they employ them. This meaningless phrase is also frequently used in the news bulletins of radio and television, in English as well as in Urdu and the regional languages.

Grim-looking desk men in newspaper offices who can otherwise shatter the ego of ace reporters by making mincemeat of their scoops, accept it without a murmur.

This set of seven words “and remained with him for some time” is now an integral part of English journalism in Pakistan. And if Mr Guinness were to pay attention it might make it to the Book of World Records as the longest-running cliche in history. It’s a wonder and a cause of constant surprise to me how British newspapers manage to do without it.

I am sure this column is not going to make any difference to the ability of this masterpiece in absurdity to survive. At least another 25 years is the minimum that I give it.

By that time the English used in our newspapers will have anyway lost its resemblance to the Queen’s English and many more cliches will have become part of the journalists’ repertoire. Meantime, till he died some time ago, Qazi Saeed, unperturbed by the monstrosity that he had inflicted on the English language, continued to dispense free homeopathic medicines to the citizens of Islamabad.

I have confined myself to the two journalistic cliches because those used by our politicians and government leaders would make too long a list to fit into a column of this size.

I have never authored a book, but I do feel like writing one about their use of cliches and platitudes as substitutes for meaningful statements, and other curiosities of our English journalism.

THE writing on the wall is audaciously explicit. “Sharon, Lily is waiting for you”, says one version of the graffiti reportedly popping up on walls across Israel. The favourite alternative reads: “Sharon, Rabin is waiting for you.” The first is a reference to the Israeli prime minister’s wife, who died of cancer five years ago; the second alludes to the fate of Ariel Sharon’s predecessor Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated 10 years ago.

These fairly explicit anonymous threats to one of the country’s least conciliatory heads of government don’t come from those routinely derided as “Arab terrorists”. They are being made by those who hero-worship Yigal Amir and Baruch Goldstein. The former shot Rabin; the latter claimed 29 lives when he sprayed Palestinians at prayer with bullets at a congregation in Hebron.

Given Sharon’s well-documented antipathy to Palestinians and the Arab blood on his hands, isn’t it somewhat surprising that those on the Zionist extreme make threats against his life instead of including him in their pantheon?

The trouble with those accustomed to looking at life in stark black and white is that their vision refuses to register all the shades of grey in between. Had it been otherwise, they probably wouldn’t have failed to recognize that, notwithstanding his plan to cede control of the Gaza Strip in July, Sharon represents a fairly ominous hue as far as Palestinians are concerned.

Like a dark and threatening cloud, he is forever willing to rain on their parade. The Gaza decision, which involves dismantling a handful of illegal Jewish settlements, appears to be part of a ploy to permanently hang on to substantial chunks of the West Bank. Not surprisingly, that doesn’t cut much ice with those who believe Israel’s borders, restored to their biblical expanse, should stretch from the Euphrates to the Nile.

Most of them realize the impracticality of that goal, but the very minimum they are prepared to accept is an Israel made “greater” through the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, with the Palestinians preferably deported. At least one of them, Baruch Marzel, the founder of the Kach organization, considers withdrawal from Gaza to be as grave a crime as the Nazi Judeocide, saying: “This is worse than killing my kids or raping my daughters.”

It isn’t altogether surprising, then, that Sharon can pose as the epitome of reason in contrast — even though he undoubtedly has, throughout his years in government, played a crucial role in expanding illegal settlements on Arab territory, deliberately creating hard-to-reverse “facts on ground”, and thereby encouraging the facile extremism epitomized by the likes of Marzel. His change of tack isn’t so much a metamorphosis as a nod to realpolitik. Unfortunately, it doesn’t follow that a two-state solution will emerge in the foreseeable future.

It could be argued that narrow Zionism of the Marzel variety is mirrored on the Palestinian side by the Islamist zeal that produces suicide bombers alongside the zealous view that Israel should cease to exist. However, just as most Israelis would be quite happy to be able to live in peace within their country’s 1967 borders, the vast majority of Palestinians would be satisfied with a viable state built on the West Bank and Gaza, a fraction of historical Palestine, provided its sovereignty is not compromised.

Although, unlike Yasser Arafat before him, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has not been ostracized by the Israelis, the customary breakdown in negotiations whenever a suicide bomber manages to get through Israeli security checkpoints has been revived as a tactic after an all-too-brief hiatus. Abbas was holding talks in Cairo this week with representatives of 13 militant Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and was expected to succeed in persuading them to acquiesce in a ceasefire agreement he verbally concluded with Sharon in Sharm el-Sheikh last month.

That would undoubtedly be a positive step. However, no group or individual can provide an absolute guarantee against individual acts of violence. Nor can the semi-empowered Palestinian Authority clamp down on all possible sources of militancy without going to totalitarian extremes. Besides, the impression that even isolated acts of terrorism can halt in its tracks all movement towards a negotiated settlement serves only to strengthen the resolve of those who are inclined to sabotage it because they see it as a sell-out. If the Sharon regime is serious about peace and determined not to pander to Zionist militants who interfere with its resolve, why does it insist on pandering to extremists on the Arab side?

It is, of course, a big if. For years Israel maintained, with staunch American support, that Arafat was the chief obstacle to peace — even while the hoary old warrior was busy bending over backwards to accommodate his adversaries, to the extent that erstwhile admirers began to accuse him of spinelessness. Eventually reduced to a prisoner in his compound, he was repeatedly threatened with summary execution.

The relatively innocuous Abu Mazen (as Abbas is generally known among his would-be compatriots) received the Israeli and American stamp of approval ahead of an election that earned the same camp’s accolade as a pioneering exercise in democracy — even though it was no different to the process whereby Arafat was elected. And subsequent municipal elections suggested Abu Mazen’s victory might have been considerably less decisive had Hamas chosen to oppose him instead of boycotting the presidential poll.

US and Israeli backing does not necessarily make Abu Mazen a bad bet for the Palestinians, even though its likely basis is the assumption that he will prove more pliable than his predecessor. Following his Camp David summit with Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton in 2000, Arafat was accused of turning down the best offer that the Palestinians could possibly have hoped for. That lie continues to be recycled at regular intervals. What Arafat refused to accept was a West Bank riddled with chunks of Israeli territory — “facts on ground” that would have made independent statehood untenable.

That would have been looked upon as the ultimate betrayal. For all his flaws and shortcomings, Arafat knew where to draw the line. It must be hoped that Abbas does, too. Peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians remains achievable, but despite the conciliatory moves on both sides in recent months, only very cautious optimism would be justified in the short run. A great many tests lie ahead for Abu Mazen, notably in July, when Israel is supposed to pull out of the Gaza Strip (which will be a landmark development if it is the first step in a withdrawal to the 1967 borders, rather than the only clear-cut territorial concession that Israel intends to make), and when Palestinians (including Hamas) will take part in legislative elections.

What the Palestinians can probably do without is “support” of the variety exemplified by the condescending conference convened in London this month by Tony Blair, who praised Sharon for his “courage” — and that too in a milieu where the unstated assumption appeared to be that the Palestinians living under occupation were themselves chiefly to blame for their plight.

A few days later, London’s mayor Ken Livingstone, defending himself against the charge of anti-Semitism for offhandedly comparing a Jewish reporter with a concentration camp guard, contributed an article to The Guardian in which he described Sharon as “a war criminal who should be in prison not in office” and noted that “Israel’s expansion has included ethnic cleansing”.

His intervention prompted several stinging ripostes, but also a considerable amount of support, from British Jews. Perhaps the most interesting response came from an Israeli, Daphna Baram, who said she considered her prime minister’s career to be “steeped in vile criminality”, but could not condone the mayor’s selectivity.

“If justice is to be dispensed evenly,” she asked, “what about your prime minister? Yes, Tony Blair, the bloke who took the British army into Iraq and butchered tens of thousands of Iraqis in an illegal war and under a wrong pretext? What is he, exactly? I, for one, think he deserves to share a cell with Ariel Sharon.” Livingstone, an opponent of the war, appears to have chosen not to respond to these perfectly valid questions.

Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, at least one commemorative event was planned on the death anniversary of peace activist Rachel Corrie. Two years ago today, the 23-year-old American was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah. In a speech last week at a toastmasters club in Berkeley, California, Brooks Berndt tried to sum up the significance of the young woman’s sacrifice, noting that “Rachel’s death garnered particular attention because US citizens take note when other US citizens die in the jaws of a winged monster who previously flew in other worlds, not ours. The previous victims were darker and of a foreign people. Our moral radar did not extend to their land and hue.” By and large, he may have added, it still doesn’t.

“On March 16th,” Berndt went on to say, “the memory of Rachel’s life can infuse our own lives with humanness. It is on this day that we can realize our world is also the world of Palestinians. It is on this day that we can realize that our world is also the world of Iraqis and Afghans. It is on this day that we can look past the small horizons of our small worlds and see the stark, chilling reality of a sky filled with angels of death descending again and again, devouring our world, our humanity.”

All one can add to that is a faintly hopeful Amen.

THE ghastly assassination of former Lebanese prime minister and billionaire businessman, Rafik Hariri, and the outrage it prompted has set in train or hastened dramatic changes in the political setup in Lebanon. These changes have precipitated, or at least acted as a catalyst for, not only changes in the Syria-Lebanon relationship but within Syria’s own body politic.

This, in turn, will affect not only the relationship of the Levant with the rest of the Middle East, but may well change the nature of the politics within the region, and in all likelihood, in many parts of the Islamic world. This may seem too sweeping a conclusion to draw from the tragic event in Beirut but much that has happened since seems to bear it out.

Two weeks after the February 14 bomb blast killed Hariri, Prime Minister Omar Karami felt compelled to resign despite the fact that he clearly enjoyed a majority in parliament. It was the same parliament that had, under Syrian pressure, extended the term of President Lahoud and brought about Hariri’s resignation a few months earlier. The resignation came apparently because of the outrage of the Lebanese people, or at least one section of the people, which brought large crowds on to the streets of Beirut and had the streets echoing with allegations that Karami’s government and Syrian intelligence were behind the assassination.

On March 9, however, just a week or so after his resignation the prime minister was literally voted back in office when some 70 of the 78 legislators who met President Lahoud asked for his reappointment. This followed a day after Hezbollah — that represents the Shia plurality in Lebanon, was the principal instrument in securing Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and is viewed as a supporter of Syria — mounted a demonstration of more than half a million people easily dwarfing all the anti-Syria and anti-government demonstrations held in Beirut’s Martyr’s Square earlier, and leaving no one in any doubt about the political support that the Hezbollah could muster.

Was one the direct consequence of the other? Possibly not. The Hezbollah leader speaking to reporters two days before the massive demonstration of the Hezbollah’s strength seemed to make it clear that it would be demonstrating against foreign interference in Lebanon and not opposing Syrian withdrawal, even while wanting the Lebanese to acknowledge the debt they owed to Syria.

More importantly, the Hezbollah wanted that the Syrian withdrawal should be seen as an implementation of the Taif agreement of 1989 rather than the UN Security Council Resolution 1559, passed last year with joint US and French sponsorship, which called for the complete withdrawal of Syrian forces and the rapid disarming of the Hezbollah.

Under the Taif agreement which brought the long running civil war in Lebanon to an end, the Syrians agreed to withdraw their forces from the rest of Lebanon into the Bekaa Valley within two years and thereafter hold negotiations with the Lebanese agreement on a complete withdrawal. This agreement also permitted the Hezbollah to retain its arsenal to fight the Israelis who at that time continued to occupy parts of southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah leader Nasrullah criticized the Egyptians and Saudis for advising Syria to adhere to the strict requirements of the Security Council resolution stating that this US demand was a photocopy of the Israeli demand.

Hezbollah was formed in the early 1980s with Iranian support and won itself a broad measure of support among the Lebanese Shias, who form the plurality of Lebanon’s population, by providing a broad range of social services in the impoverished areas of Lebanon. Their real claim to support within Lebanon’s broader population, however, flowed from their armed resistance to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

The party was credited with having secured Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and for continuing to maintain pressure on Israel with regard to the disputed Sheba farms on the Israel-Lebanon border. Its ties with Syrian grew in part from the fact that Syria acted as the conduit for the assistance Hezbollah received from Iran and in part from the fact that Syria found Hezbollah’s resistance against Israel a useful tool to protect its own borders against Israel.

Hezbollah under Syrian patronage was allowed to retain its arms and wage its battle against Israel when under the Taif agreement all other militias in Lebanon were made to disarm.

But now the indications are that the shrewd leaders of the Hezbollah are positioning themselves to be part of the Lebanese polity rather than the surrogates of foreign forces. Even today, as a registered political party, they have a bloc of 12/13 seats in the 128 member Lebanese legislature. The problem is that their transformation from an organization dedicated to attacks on Israel has evolved only to the point where they regard themselves as the guardians of South Lebanon against Israel. More time would perhaps be needed before they become a Lebanese political party with no militant wing.

Omar Karami, who resigned recently, is expected to form a government of national unity and to hold the reins of power till the parliamentary elections in May. There are little prospects of success of his government but even if he succeeds, uncertainty prevails about the future political setup. Although the big Anti-Syria rally in Beirut on Monday apparently rivalled the size of the Hezbollah demonstration of March 8, it also highlighted the growing polarization within the country.

From the American perspective the Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. It is blamed for the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut and for other attacks on American targets. The Americans made every effort to have the Europeans also declare the Hezbollah a terrorist organization but failed in the face of French and other opposition.

Now it seems that the Americans are changing tack. They now say that even while they continue to regard the Hezbollah as a terrorist organization they will not stand in the way of Hezbollah’s participation in the Lebanese parliamentary elections nor would they insist on its immediate disarming.

The priority is to get the Syrians out of Lebanon so that the parliamentary elections can be held without foreign interference. In fact, Condoleeza Rice’s statements seem to suggest that the United States expects the Hezbollah to do well in the elections and entertains the hope that once the Hezbollah comes to power it will modify its policies. “Very often,” she said in a recent interview, “elections themselves have a changing impact on people and on the balance of forces.”

She went on to add that “in the long run you can’t have a democratic society and a society based on rule of law where you have groups or organizations that are committed to violence outside of that framework”, but for the Hezbollah it is a clear indication that the Americans will not stand in the way of the Hezbollah scoring an election victory. Such statements may be found somewhat reassuring by some members of the Hezbollah but most will continue to believe that the eventual objective of the Americans will be the destruction of the Hezbollah and their political activities will be conditioned by this conviction.

After having failed to implement the Taif agreement for some 16 years, Syria’s President Bashar Assad, first termed as the “young leader” when he took over the reins of power after his father’s death five years ago and now termed the “weak leader” has promised the UN envoy that he would withdraw his forces from Lebanon. According to the agreement, one-third of all Syrian forces and intelligence agents would return to Syria while the remaining would be moved to the Bekaa valley by the end of March. The timetable for the return of the forces moved into the Bekaa valley would be determined in a meeting of the Lebanese and Syrian leaders on April 7. Bashar Assad has agreed to this not only because of the demonstrations in Beirut or the unrelenting American pressure but because such Arab countries as Egypt and Saudi Arabia have asked him to do so.

Will he survive the domestic turmoil that is bound to ensue? Will he be able to resist the next set of American demands which would relate to the closing of the offices of the Palestinian groups in Syria and the dismantling of the alleged Iraqi Baathist network that the Americans believe is financing and directing the insurgency in Iraq? Will he be able to resist demands for reaching a settlement with Israel on a peace treaty?

The Egyptians and Saudis both pressured Syria to implement the UN Security Council resolution. Partly this may have been driven by the fact that Hariri’s assassination and the support from Syria’s minority Allawite regime to the Shias in Lebanon aroused fears that the Sunnis in Lebanon would be marginalized just as happened to the Sunnis in Iraq. In doing so, however, they were also weakening Bashar Assad’s ability to retain power in Syria and perhaps undermining Syria’s ability to seek a just settlement with Israel. They must have calculated, moreover, that this could bring down the Bashar regime and if so this could have unintended consequences.

The most important question is how the Syrian withdrawal can affect Lebanon’s internal polity. The sectarian differences in Lebanon run deep. The confessional system under which the president is a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of the parliament a Shia is patently unjust given the fact that the Shias are the plurality in the country.

If the Hezbollah sheds its Syrian and Iranian connections and becomes a nationalist party one of the first demands that it is likely to make is that the power structure in Lebanon should more accurately reflect the demographic reality.

How will that be done? The confessional system was introduced by the French as a way of giving the minority Maronite Christians a dominant role in Lebanese society. Will they and other western powers stand by and let the Shias assert themselves? Will the Maronite Christians be prepared to see a diminution in their influence? Will the wary coexistence between the Sunni, Shia, Christian and Druze continue or will there be a return to the civil war fought on sectarian lines that tore Lebanon apart from 1975 to 1990? Is there any guarantee that this will not happen?

The Lebanese army, even while it numbers 72,000, cannot provide a safeguard against such sectarian strife. The Americans indicate that they are aware of the need for the international community to fill the vacuum which will be created by the Syrian withdrawal but at the same time reports state that the Americans are opposed to the expansion of the UN force in Lebanon.

The ordinary Lebanese are apprehensive. According to one report the AK-47 rifle (the kalashnikov) which used to cost about a $100 on the streets of Beirut now costs $700. It seems that the Lebanese while hoping for the best are preparing for the worst.

IT was some time in the early nineties when the high commissioner for New Zealand in Islamabad said, while launching a book his mission had funded, that the coming decade would be the age of information.

Those were days when information technology had barely picked up in this country, cell phones were a rarity and a status symbol of the elite, only the CNN had started its round the clock worldwide channel and not many knew about the wonders of the Internet. But the high commissioner’s words were prophetic.

Today, it takes no time at all for news and information to travel from one end of the globe to the other. E-mails, satellite television, modern phone services equipped with cameras and the worldwide web have made the world a global village. Communication has enabled people to cross boundaries with ease and has broken down cultural and language barriers. This has brought people closer and promoted greater interaction between them than has ever happened before in human history.

Technology has also changed the shape of the media. It is now more interactive. Viewers can ring in to ask questions on talk shows and the Internet allows people to send in their feedback instantaneously, without much of a hassle. Anyone can, making a small payment, set up a website which can be accessed by anyone. These are positive developments because they have stimulated human interest in information.

But this also has its flip side. Communication technology has led to an overload of information — an information explosion as one may say. The worst part is that embedded in the information is a massive load of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. With so much information floating around, most people now have no time to absorb it, think about it, evaluate it, sift out the grain from the chaff and then accept only what seems plausibe. Instead, the media has emerged as a dangerous tool.

The media is now doing more than just providing the news. It is virtually playing the role of an actor in international and domestic affairs. Until the information age was ushered in with a bang, those who could use the media — at least in Pakistan — were a selected few. Of course, the government was the key user, and unfortunately, by gagging the press and controlling radio and television it exploited the media to project its own point of view, suppress the oppositions voice and manipulate public opinion. Now, the reverse is possible. The government has lost its monopoly over the media, thanks to the technology which has made it difficult to control the various channels through which information comes in. Moreover, a new trend has set in internationally. Live and continuous television coverage has empowered the media. It is influencing the decision-makers quite profoundly and decisively.

Stephen Hess and Marvin Kalb write in their book The Media and the War on Terrorism about the “CNN effect” (a term now applied for all television channels), “In 1992, President George H.W. Bush saw television images of starving children in Somalia and he felt obliged to send US troops there to distribute food.” They add, “Less than a year, later President Bill Clinton saw television images of Somali fighters dragging the desecrated body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu and he felt obliged to withdraw the troops.”

With more serious implications has been the media’s propensity to project an image which may actually misrepresent the truth. The images could be positive or negative, but not accurate. John Simpson, a BBC correspondent, has disclosed in his book News from No Man’s Land that the anti-American demonstrations in Peshawar, after 9/11 and the fall of the Taliban in Kabul, were actually not as violent and angry as the television pictures made them out to be. He feels that this distortion has reinforced the “wrong-headed and shallow paranoia” of the West vis-a-vis Islam.

Small wonder then, that President Musharraf’s government has become overly mindful about projecting the “softer image” of Pakistan. The general belief seems to be that if you paint a rosy picture of the country and push all the unpleasant aspects of life under the carpet, all will be well. That would explain why advertisements were placed by the federal ministry of information and broadcasting in some English language newspapers last week stating that it was looking for “seasoned professionals” in evolving a “soft image of Pakistan”.

A beginning has already been made. Various government departments, especially those which do not have good reputation, such as NAB, have already appointed such consultants. The government also imported a host of journalists from abroad for Expo 2005, assigned officers from the ministry of information in Islamabad to act as escorts to their media guests in Karachi, fed them with information of the “soft image” of Pakistan and sent them home. Lo and behold, the foreign media (albeit not the top newspapers which had their credibility to guard) was flooded with stories giving only one side of the picture in Pakistan. Good they didn’t see the traffic jams the Expo caused. When it was pointed out to one television representative looking for the soft image that there is a bleak side too, she said that what she was doing is not journalism.

This is an age when the role of the media is changing. What is disturbing is that the lines between information, misinformation and disinformation are becoming blurred. As a result, many unscrupulous people are using the media, especially the Internet, to spread a host of lies. Since there is no professional check — an editor for websites, a code of ethics for television and radio — just about anyone can acquire a medium and put anything up there. All the information so released becomes an article of faith because it has been well presented and is believed by the gullible reader/viewer/listener.

Here, one example would suffice. A lot of noise is being made through the web about “a questionnaire the Aga Khan University Examination Board has distributed among students”. Newspaper editors have been receiving e-mails quoting some of the questions designed to alarm parents and malign the Aga Khan University. The fact, as this writer has investigated, is something different.

First of all, the e-mails are sent from hotmail addresses and when one writes to them, one does not receive a reply — a sure indication that it is a hoax.

Secondly, on obtaining the original questionnaire, it was found that it was a “Youth Health Survey” developed by the Global Fund, the government of Pakistan (health ministry) and the Aga Khan Foundation (something quite different from the AKU).

Thirdly, the questionnaire does not contain even one of the obscene questions listed in the email. The quality of English should itself discredit the authenticity of the report. Yet this bit of disinformation is being widely accepted and forms the basis of the attack by the religious extremist groups which have mounted the campaign against the Aga Khan Examination Board. So blinded are the people who want to believe the disinformation, that when they saw a television programme on the PTV in which Dr Shams Kassim Lakha said that the Examination Board had not distributed the questionnaire, a particular viewer insisted that he had heard Dr Lakha saying that the questionnaire should not have been distributed.

In fact, if anything, the questionnaire issued by the Global Fund is a very sensible one, keeps our cultural sensitivities in mind and is one which should be filled in by every class IX and X student in every school in the country.

What, however, is not clear is why the soft image pioneers don’t react firmly when such disinformation is dished out. Is it because it has in the past used the disinformation mode to propagate its own point of view or defend itself? Is it because disinformation will be used to create a soft image of the country? One hopes not, for Pakistan does have many many plus points, and one cannot sweep many many of its vices under the carpet. As for the government’s responsibility to refute disinformation, it must like Caesar’s wife be above suspicion.

NO one can say we are not innovative, or even inventive, where the English language is concerned, as I had occasion to point out some months ago. It does not matter if, as a nation, we don’t have any great scientific or technological ingenuity to show. Those of us who write for the English newspapers make up that deficiency by forging new idioms and new expressions, and even coining new words.

I shall not try to recount our splendid performance in this field because I do not want the English-speaking foreign community in Pakistan to feel small if they have failed to make any contribution in this regard. The trouble is that the well-educated British are taught to be wary of cliches, while our inventiveness has mostly been in this genre. Our government leaders are particularly fond of them and believe that, in the absence of solid achievements, the people are well beguiled with cliches and platitudes.

The British in Pakistan are, therefore, not driven by the desire to add to the existing storehouse of cliches, and may even be chary of using those that are already part of their language. On the other hand, we go on designing new ones, and we then see to it that they don’t go out of use.

Perhaps one of the greatest of our home-made cliches — launched and kept afloat by journalism — is the set of seven words “and remained with him for some time.” This is invariably used when a prominent personality from abroad calls on the president or the prime minister. Some reporters also employ it when these VIPs call on lesser personages, but I am sure the inventor would frown on liberty being taken with his product through this indiscriminate use.

I have questioned many journalists who employ this set of words every day. These newsmen are basically from the two news agencies and state-run radio and television. I wanted to find out why they do so. Why do they have to say that the visiting VIP “remained” with the president or head of government “for some time.”

Their explanation is simple, reasonable and perfectly valid and throws new light on some hitherto unexplained nuances of press reporting. They contend that unless these words are used the impression might be created that after making the formal call the distinguished visitor did not come back and stayed on indefinitely.

I had to agree that such an impression would not do. Apart from causing worry to the friendly foreign government involved, the public would be well within its rights to ask what had happened to the visitor and what he was doing in the President’s House or in the office of the prime minister all the time. The situation would become all the more mystifying the next day when the same VIP would be found making more calls, say on the Senate Chairman or the National Assembly Speaker, without having come back from his visit to the head of state or the chief executive.

There is another cliche attached to the stories of “call on” as they are referred to in official protocol circles. And that is, “They discussed matters of mutual interest.”

Again when I asked the reporters concerned why they have to use this phrase half a dozen times every day, they put me a counter-question. They asked, “Then what shall we say they discussed?” They surely caught me on the wrong foot.

There is a story behind the set of words “and remained with him for some time.” Long ago, probably in the mid-sixties, Qazi Ahmed Saeed of Radio Pakistan was press secretary to President Ayub.

On a visit to Lahore the president took time out to meet a local politician of some importance. When the president was flying back to Islamabad the pressmen at the airport got after Qazi Saeed to give them some details of the meeting. This he was unable to do as he didn’t know anything himself.

So they asked him to tell them at least how long the meeting lasted. This information is considered vital in political reporting as it gives some idea of its significance.

Cornered by the reporters, Qazi had a brainwave and said, “You can say he was with the President for some time.” This was the beginning of this senseless phrase to which its equally senseless popularity gave it historical status.

Nearly forty years have passed but the seven words have not lost their shine and utility. Day in and out they are rubbed in by the journalists without even pausing to give thought to what they are saying when they employ them. This meaningless phrase is also frequently used in the news bulletins of radio and television, in English as well as in Urdu and the regional languages.

Grim-looking desk men in newspaper offices who can otherwise shatter the ego of ace reporters by making mincemeat of their scoops, accept it without a murmur.

This set of seven words “and remained with him for some time” is now an integral part of English journalism in Pakistan. And if Mr Guinness were to pay attention it might make it to the Book of World Records as the longest-running cliche in history. It’s a wonder and a cause of constant surprise to me how British newspapers manage to do without it.

I am sure this column is not going to make any difference to the ability of this masterpiece in absurdity to survive. At least another 25 years is the minimum that I give it.

By that time the English used in our newspapers will have anyway lost its resemblance to the Queen’s English and many more cliches will have become part of the journalists’ repertoire. Meantime, till he died some time ago, Qazi Saeed, unperturbed by the monstrosity that he had inflicted on the English language, continued to dispense free homeopathic medicines to the citizens of Islamabad.

I have confined myself to the two journalistic cliches because those used by our politicians and government leaders would make too long a list to fit into a column of this size.

I have never authored a book, but I do feel like writing one about their use of cliches and platitudes as substitutes for meaningful statements, and other curiosities of our English journalism.

THE writing on the wall is audaciously explicit. “Sharon, Lily is waiting for you”, says one version of the graffiti reportedly popping up on walls across Israel. The favourite alternative reads: “Sharon, Rabin is waiting for you.” The first is a reference to the Israeli prime minister’s wife, who died of cancer five years ago; the second alludes to the fate of Ariel Sharon’s predecessor Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated 10 years ago.

These fairly explicit anonymous threats to one of the country’s least conciliatory heads of government don’t come from those routinely derided as “Arab terrorists”. They are being made by those who hero-worship Yigal Amir and Baruch Goldstein. The former shot Rabin; the latter claimed 29 lives when he sprayed Palestinians at prayer with bullets at a congregation in Hebron.

Given Sharon’s well-documented antipathy to Palestinians and the Arab blood on his hands, isn’t it somewhat surprising that those on the Zionist extreme make threats against his life instead of including him in their pantheon?

The trouble with those accustomed to looking at life in stark black and white is that their vision refuses to register all the shades of grey in between. Had it been otherwise, they probably wouldn’t have failed to recognize that, notwithstanding his plan to cede control of the Gaza Strip in July, Sharon represents a fairly ominous hue as far as Palestinians are concerned.

Like a dark and threatening cloud, he is forever willing to rain on their parade. The Gaza decision, which involves dismantling a handful of illegal Jewish settlements, appears to be part of a ploy to permanently hang on to substantial chunks of the West Bank. Not surprisingly, that doesn’t cut much ice with those who believe Israel’s borders, restored to their biblical expanse, should stretch from the Euphrates to the Nile.

Most of them realize the impracticality of that goal, but the very minimum they are prepared to accept is an Israel made “greater” through the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, with the Palestinians preferably deported. At least one of them, Baruch Marzel, the founder of the Kach organization, considers withdrawal from Gaza to be as grave a crime as the Nazi Judeocide, saying: “This is worse than killing my kids or raping my daughters.”

It isn’t altogether surprising, then, that Sharon can pose as the epitome of reason in contrast — even though he undoubtedly has, throughout his years in government, played a crucial role in expanding illegal settlements on Arab territory, deliberately creating hard-to-reverse “facts on ground”, and thereby encouraging the facile extremism epitomized by the likes of Marzel. His change of tack isn’t so much a metamorphosis as a nod to realpolitik. Unfortunately, it doesn’t follow that a two-state solution will emerge in the foreseeable future.

It could be argued that narrow Zionism of the Marzel variety is mirrored on the Palestinian side by the Islamist zeal that produces suicide bombers alongside the zealous view that Israel should cease to exist. However, just as most Israelis would be quite happy to be able to live in peace within their country’s 1967 borders, the vast majority of Palestinians would be satisfied with a viable state built on the West Bank and Gaza, a fraction of historical Palestine, provided its sovereignty is not compromised.

Although, unlike Yasser Arafat before him, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has not been ostracized by the Israelis, the customary breakdown in negotiations whenever a suicide bomber manages to get through Israeli security checkpoints has been revived as a tactic after an all-too-brief hiatus. Abbas was holding talks in Cairo this week with representatives of 13 militant Palestinian groups, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and was expected to succeed in persuading them to acquiesce in a ceasefire agreement he verbally concluded with Sharon in Sharm el-Sheikh last month.

That would undoubtedly be a positive step. However, no group or individual can provide an absolute guarantee against individual acts of violence. Nor can the semi-empowered Palestinian Authority clamp down on all possible sources of militancy without going to totalitarian extremes. Besides, the impression that even isolated acts of terrorism can halt in its tracks all movement towards a negotiated settlement serves only to strengthen the resolve of those who are inclined to sabotage it because they see it as a sell-out. If the Sharon regime is serious about peace and determined not to pander to Zionist militants who interfere with its resolve, why does it insist on pandering to extremists on the Arab side?

It is, of course, a big if. For years Israel maintained, with staunch American support, that Arafat was the chief obstacle to peace — even while the hoary old warrior was busy bending over backwards to accommodate his adversaries, to the extent that erstwhile admirers began to accuse him of spinelessness. Eventually reduced to a prisoner in his compound, he was repeatedly threatened with summary execution.

The relatively innocuous Abu Mazen (as Abbas is generally known among his would-be compatriots) received the Israeli and American stamp of approval ahead of an election that earned the same camp’s accolade as a pioneering exercise in democracy — even though it was no different to the process whereby Arafat was elected. And subsequent municipal elections suggested Abu Mazen’s victory might have been considerably less decisive had Hamas chosen to oppose him instead of boycotting the presidential poll.

US and Israeli backing does not necessarily make Abu Mazen a bad bet for the Palestinians, even though its likely basis is the assumption that he will prove more pliable than his predecessor. Following his Camp David summit with Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton in 2000, Arafat was accused of turning down the best offer that the Palestinians could possibly have hoped for. That lie continues to be recycled at regular intervals. What Arafat refused to accept was a West Bank riddled with chunks of Israeli territory — “facts on ground” that would have made independent statehood untenable.

That would have been looked upon as the ultimate betrayal. For all his flaws and shortcomings, Arafat knew where to draw the line. It must be hoped that Abbas does, too. Peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians remains achievable, but despite the conciliatory moves on both sides in recent months, only very cautious optimism would be justified in the short run. A great many tests lie ahead for Abu Mazen, notably in July, when Israel is supposed to pull out of the Gaza Strip (which will be a landmark development if it is the first step in a withdrawal to the 1967 borders, rather than the only clear-cut territorial concession that Israel intends to make), and when Palestinians (including Hamas) will take part in legislative elections.

What the Palestinians can probably do without is “support” of the variety exemplified by the condescending conference convened in London this month by Tony Blair, who praised Sharon for his “courage” — and that too in a milieu where the unstated assumption appeared to be that the Palestinians living under occupation were themselves chiefly to blame for their plight.

A few days later, London’s mayor Ken Livingstone, defending himself against the charge of anti-Semitism for offhandedly comparing a Jewish reporter with a concentration camp guard, contributed an article to The Guardian in which he described Sharon as “a war criminal who should be in prison not in office” and noted that “Israel’s expansion has included ethnic cleansing”.

His intervention prompted several stinging ripostes, but also a considerable amount of support, from British Jews. Perhaps the most interesting response came from an Israeli, Daphna Baram, who said she considered her prime minister’s career to be “steeped in vile criminality”, but could not condone the mayor’s selectivity.

“If justice is to be dispensed evenly,” she asked, “what about your prime minister? Yes, Tony Blair, the bloke who took the British army into Iraq and butchered tens of thousands of Iraqis in an illegal war and under a wrong pretext? What is he, exactly? I, for one, think he deserves to share a cell with Ariel Sharon.” Livingstone, an opponent of the war, appears to have chosen not to respond to these perfectly valid questions.

Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, at least one commemorative event was planned on the death anniversary of peace activist Rachel Corrie. Two years ago today, the 23-year-old American was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah. In a speech last week at a toastmasters club in Berkeley, California, Brooks Berndt tried to sum up the significance of the young woman’s sacrifice, noting that “Rachel’s death garnered particular attention because US citizens take note when other US citizens die in the jaws of a winged monster who previously flew in other worlds, not ours. The previous victims were darker and of a foreign people. Our moral radar did not extend to their land and hue.” By and large, he may have added, it still doesn’t.

“On March 16th,” Berndt went on to say, “the memory of Rachel’s life can infuse our own lives with humanness. It is on this day that we can realize our world is also the world of Palestinians. It is on this day that we can realize that our world is also the world of Iraqis and Afghans. It is on this day that we can look past the small horizons of our small worlds and see the stark, chilling reality of a sky filled with angels of death descending again and again, devouring our world, our humanity.”

All one can add to that is a faintly hopeful Amen.