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Blows to peace

WAGING PEACE HAS become hazardous and demanding, like perhaps at no other period in recent memory. Hardly a week after the handshake for peace in the deserts of Jordan in the presence of the American President, the Middle East has plunged back into the familiar abyss of hatred and unmitigated violence. The enveloping darkness makes a cruel mockery of the road map for peace drawn up by the quartet of the U.S., the European Union, the United Nations and Russia and on which George W. Bush had staked his prestige. It lies shattered, littered with the bodies of innocent Israeli and Palestinian victims. With the extremists on both sides still clinging to their irrational faith in the gun, there was always the danger that violence would erupt and deny the peace initiative the breather from killings on which it hoped to sustain itself. A century of enmity was not about to end, the hardliners in Israel and the Palestinian terrorists were not easily to be won over. The challenge from them was not unexpected, but what has jolted the world is that violence should break out before the idea of peace had even begun to sink in.

The world had apparently reckoned without the likes of the trigger-happy Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. The most shocking feature of the violence of the last three days has been the way the state of Israel and its hawkish Prime Minister have responded to the evolving situation on the ground. Not surprisingly, the first shot was fired by the Palestinian terror groups, which attacked an Israeli military outpost on Sunday and killed four soldiers. If he had been loyal to his peace pledge, Mr. Sharon should have held fire and denied the terrorists the reward they were hoping for. By retaliating on an unprecedented scale, the Prime Minister betrayed the trust reposed in him by the international community and undermined the fragile process to which he was a party. The assassination attempt on Abdul Aziz Rantisi, co-founder and one of the high profile policymakers of the Palestinian group, Hamas, guaranteed the result that all opponents of peace were fighting for: an escalation of violence that is shocking even by the horrific standards of the Middle East. The suicide attack on a passenger bus in Jerusalem on Wednesday, for which a Hezbollah group in Lebanon has claimed responsibility, occurred despite the heightened security in Israel, if anything underlining the urgency of restraint by the state. Mr. Sharon's response was to launch another retaliatory strike. There was no evidence of the change of heart proclaimed by Israelis when Mr. Sharon described illegal Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory as occupation.

Washington has stepped in and condemned the Israeli assassination attempt on Dr. Rantisi. It should move quickly to ensure that the mindless violence by both sides does not derail the peace commitment, the main support for which stemmed from the powerful backing of Mr. Bush. The Jerusalem suicide attack has been criticised by the Palestine President, Yasser Arafat. For his aide and Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, the killings are a severe test of his capacity to rein in the militants. Mr. Abbas, who faces opposition from important quarters within the Palestinian camp itself, needs the support of the U.S. and cooperation of Israel to succeed. Mr. Bush, scheduled to send a monitoring team to the region, should press Mr. Sharon and his hawkish military to halt their strikes before he urges Mr. Abbas to clamp down on Palestinian terrorists. After undermining the authority of Mr. Arafat with Washington's tacit support, Israel should realise that it is in its interest to strengthen the hands of Mr. Abbas and not attempt to instigate a civil war in Palestine, which will only drag the entire region further into the abyss.

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