Embarking on mission impossible

It was about the nearest a cautious and studiously unflappable soldier-diplomat gets to losing his cool. Was it "mission-impossible" to the Middle East, General Colin Powell was asked, just before taking wing for Israel.

"I don't like wallowing with pessimists," flashed back the reply. "It is necessary for me to go."

That word "necessary" sums up everything. The trip is necessary because, it is universally held, only the US can impose its will on the Israelis and Palestinians, in the throes of their worst fighting in decades. It is necessary, too, if the Bush administration is to salvage moderate Arab support for what is assumed to be its prime goal in the region - evicting Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.

It is necessary, finally, to preserve Bush's authority and prestige at a moment when the three prime parties to the conflict - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat and those moderate Arab states - are refusing to do what Washington tells them.

But "necessary" also conveys all the pleasure of having a tooth pulled.

Duty has driven Powell to the region, as it has driven every recent American Secretary of State before him - some, like him, having resisted to the last. Like them, he and Bush knew that in the end he would have to go. But none of his predecessors faced quite as bleak a prospect.

Suicide bombers permitting, Powell may meet Arafat in Ramallah. But that meagre achievement does not alter the depressing reality: That the US has no alternative to dealing with a man who has lost virtually all credibility in Washington as a negotiating partner. Belatedly, too, the Bush team is coming to realise what most of the world has long understood - that Sharon's answer to violence is more violence.

"After he's finished, what next?" the proverbial "senior administration official" wondered to the Washington Post yesterday. "The fear is that he knows no other way than being tough."

However, even as that official spoke, Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Israeli Prime Minister, was doing the rounds in Washington, peddling not compromise but even harsher remedies than those of Sharon: The deportation of Arafat, an open-ended military operation to destroy the West Bank lairs of the suicide attackers, and the construction of a physical wall along Israel's border to protect it.

The fact remains, too, that whatever Bush's demands for an immediate withdrawal from the West Bank, his gut instinct lies with Israel. So too does that of Congress, where Netanyahu concentrated much of his effort this week. So too does that of the conservative and Christian right, a key part of this President's political base.

It was "imperative," Christian groups said in an open letter to Bush this week, for the US "to stand with our friend and ally Israel as they attempt to defeat the same forces of terrorism that we have been battling since September 11".

But that is precisely the President's dilemma. He is learning another truth - that, however much he might wish it otherwise, the black-and-white "you're either with us or against us" approach to al Qaeda and international terrorism cannot be applied to the infinite shades of grey of the 60-year-old crisis in the Middle East.

The President's frustration is evident in the testy way he talks about it, leading some to wonder about the administration's deeper commitment, whether it has the will to last the course. That perception, too, does nothing to make Powell's task any easier.

But somehow, the crisis must be defused, to free Bush's hands for Iraq.

Thus the talk of some dramatic new initiative that might kickstart negotiations on the thorniest final settlement issues - the status of Jerusalem, the Israeli settlements, and the return of Palestinian refugees - even as the fighting still rages.

Few people any longer dwell on the "Tenet Plan" or "Mitchell Plan," arduously crafted by CIA director George Tenet and former Senator Majority Leader George Mitchell, to secure, respectively, a ceasefire and confidence-building measures that would lead to political negotiations.

Instead, the talk in the think tanks and institutes that oil the wheels of Washington policymaking is now of international conferences to elaborate a settlement, of UN resolution 242 of 1967 (now resurrected in the Saudi peace plan), of an international peacekeeping force to make a deal stick - the latter being something that the Israelis have always resisted tooth and nail.

It is what the French call, almost untranslatably, a "fuite en avant", a "flight forward", of not retreating in the face of difficulty but leaping beyond it to confront an even greater difficulty in the hope the lesser one will disappear along the way.

But Powell is unlikely to make any such breakthrough. Perhaps the fighting will subside while he is there, but even if it does it is likely to flare up thereafter.

This Secretary of State may not like "wallowing with the pessimists". But he could find he has no choice.

- INDEPENDENT

Feature: Middle East

Map

History of conflict

UN: Information on the Question of Palestine

Israel's Permanent Mission to the UN

Palestine's Permanent Observer Mission to the UN

Middle East Daily

Arabic News

Arabic Media Internet Network

Jerusalem Post

US Department of State - Middle East Peace Process