The demand has finally been made that Israel withdraw immediately from Palestinian cities. President Bush and the United Nations Security Council had harsh words to say about Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's non-consistent opposition to terrorism.
The situation in the Middle East has characteristics of a quarrel between two little kids who can't learn to share. The severity of the situation is far more deadly, however, and one certainly can't rule out the potential for worldwide involvement.
We are kidding ourselves if we think the soft approach is going to work this time. Time and time again we have met with the leaders of Israel and Palestine and tried to mediate peaceful negotiations and it never comes out any better. Before we take a hardline approach, it will be necessary to figure out which side we're on.
Generally speaking, we are "committed friends" of Israel. Bush has accused Arafat of "betraying the hopes of his country" in his speech last Thursday. We seem to take the stance that we support both countries, just not the leadership of either.
Alon Pinkus, Israel's consul general in the United States, said Israel would comply with the U.S. president's wishes "once we achieve what we set out to achieve." That goal, he said, is to destroy terrorism. Neither country seems to be curbing terrorism. They are escalating the number of incidents on both sides instead.
Criticism of the Bush administration about the handling of the Middle East situation reached new levels of absurdness this week. After Bush's speech on Thursday, some of this criticism subsided a bit, especially after Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the U.S. decision to send Powell to the region "encouraging" and urged Israel to heed Bush's call to withdraw from Palestinian areas.
Columnists from an array of national newspapers have been filling political analyst's spots on CNN for a good portion of last week. Myself being a columnist, I believe a great deal of what I say to be true, however, when I issue my concerns and praises I don't expect to be elevated to the status of "political expert" overnight. CNN has glorified many columnists this week into thinking their opinions are common facts when that is not the case.
Sending Powell into the Middle East is a good start and the right move at this point. Today's society doesn't give much room for covert operations or surprise attacks. Therefore, Powell will try to get the cease-fire, and give both sides their warning.
I would doubt any agreement reached will be permanent, and this will only buy the world some time to decide what, if anything, it will do to remedy this conflict.
It is imperative that the United States, European Union, Russia and everyone else who has a vested interest in seeing this conflict turn out with a peaceful solution get involved. The United States should not be the sole mediating party. We are not the world's firefighters.
Write to Justin at jtsyndram@bsu.edu
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