Article Guardian
Middle East 28 July 2006-07-28 By Paddy Ashdown
As Tony Blair returns from Washington contemplating the Middle East, I would commend to him the prayer of Archbishop Grigua: “Lord, things are serious – this time please come yourself and do not send your son, for this no time for a boy”.
Sometimes events surpass hyperbole – and this I fear is one of them. It is impossible to overstate what is now at stake in the Middle East. What is already clear is that the shape of the Middle East cannot be the same again. But with so much dry tinder about and so many firebrands, what we cannot know is whether this will affect us all on a much wider and more dangerous scale.
It is also difficult to comprehend the exquisite nature of the dilemma on whose horns we find ourselves impaled.
On the one hand we would all like to see a cease fire, preferably immediately, backed by a settlement and the quick interposition of a peace keeping force on the ground in Lebanon and Gaza. But I remember the cease fires in Bosnia. They came and went like sunny afternoons. And when they had gone, they left the intervening force, UNPROFOR once again as impotent observers to a conflict neither side wanted to end and no-one in the international community was prepared to stop. A cease fire without the ingredients of a lasting peace and a willingness by both sides to observe it, would place any intervening international force in an equally impossible position. If they were weak they would very quickly be turned into UNPROFOR. If they were strong they would soon become an occupying force standing between the combatants, especially Hezbollah and Hamas, and the war aims they had not yet forsaken.
On the other hand, if this conflict continues the chances of it widening and widening grow greater and greater with every passing day. Shutting it down quickly must now be an imperative aim of Western policy.
Hezbollah may have started this with an outrageous breach of international law and a sustained and flagrant contravention of a UN Security Council Resolution. But it is not Hezbollah’s position which is weakening now. It is Israel’s. Their stated war aim was to destroy Hezbollah. I am not entirely certain why, having failed to do this by occupying Lebanon, they thought they could achieve it by bombing. But whatever their thinking, they have been unable to deliver the knock out blow to Hezbollah which was their primary military aim. From now on, Hezbollah does not have to win. It merely has to survive as a potent force – and it appears to be doing just that. Meanwhile the political damage done to Israel through miscalculation, overreaction and targeting errors is incalculable. But there is no comfort to be taken in the thought that Israel may be reaping the whirlwind it has helped to sow. A defeat for Israel and a victory for Hezbollah would have terrifying consequences for the Middle East, which would probably begin with regime change on a wide scale (but not the kind Washington looks for) and could end with the very battle for survival which Israel has always claimed that its use of military force was designed to avoid.
And on the anvil of Israel’s failure also sits the failure of what I suspect was the strategy of Blair and perhaps Bush. The most positive construction which can be put on this is that they hoped Israel would weaken first Hezbollah and then Iran and Syria, and thus create the context for a wider Middle Eastern settlement, incorporating Palestine and easing our problems in Iraq. Israel’s failure so far to achieve its war aims, means that this strategy, too is in danger of being frustrated.
The world should get very nervous when the US feels frustrated and Israel faces defeat. This is the time when miscalculations of even greater magnitude become even more possible. There are powerful voices amongst the neo-con Christian right who are currently so influential in Washington, that the US policy aim should be to use Israel’s excesses to draw in Iran and Syria, so that the US could “take them down”– as a prelude to re-shaping the Middle East for democracy etc. This is the Clint Eastwood, “c’mon punk make my day” strategy. If it were adopted it would be bound to lead to a widening conflagration which would embrace the fragile tinderboxes of central Asia, and goodness knows where beyond. I have to believe that no responsible government, in Washington or elsewhere would follow such a path. But…….I wish I felt more confident, in that confidence.
There is only one solution to this crisis. And it is the same solution we have to find in Iraq. To go for a wider Middle East settlement and to do it urgently. The US cannot do this. But Europe can. Would this mean talking to Iran and Syria? of course it would. You cannot make peace by talking to your own side – you can only make peace by talking to the other side. Would this mean a solution to Palestine? of course it must, for this is the burning coal that lies at the heart of the fire. Would this be unwelcome to Washington at the moment ? probably. But not if, in the end it provides a way out of the impasse in which they find themselves. Would this mean Europe embarking on its own course? Yes – but this is the right time to do it.
I cannot believe that America’s strategy is to widen the war. But, just in case Europe’s strategy now should be to widen the peace. It is the right thing to do – and we should do it now.
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