Is the Middle East peace process jinxed?

The Malta Independent on Sunday

That is what I asked myself when the news about Ariel Sharon serious medical condition hit the international news wires. It seems that whenever things start taking a promising shape for delivering a lasting if not perfect solution to the Palestinian crisis, one of the prime movers of the process suddenly disappears from the scene.

It happened before when, under the guidance of President Clinton and the good services of Norwegian mediators, Prime Minister Rabin was making considerable progress with Chairman Arafat in reaching a compromise that could assure stability in the region.

Rabin was assassinated and the peace process floundered when the Likud Party was elected to government. Under Prime Minister Netanyahu the process lost its momentum. Netanyahu is a hawk who seems to believe that Israeli security can only be defended with the use of force, without making any political concessions for a lasting peaceful co-existence solution.

I never thought the day would come when I would hear Sharon advocating conceding land for peace in the Rabin mould, and supporting the formation of a sovereign Palestinian State with a clear border with Israel, which for some time would have to be protected by the erection of a dividing wall in order to guarantee Israeli security at its borders.

I never imagined that the hawk of Sabra and Shatila notoriety would eventually be the person to use the Israel military to force the relocation, from the occupied territories in Gaza, the same Israeli families he had brought there to populate the disputed areas in order to cushion the legal borders between Palestine and Israel.

However, after the death of Arafat and the election of Abu Mazen to lead Fatah, a certain chemistry opened up between the two men, reinforced no doubt by the diplomacy of Simon Peres who had been through it all before together with Rabin. This led to confidence building measures and prospects that they could bring their extreme factions under control in order to forge a political agreement honourable for both sides.

The process seemed to be gaining momentum when Sharon and Peres teamed up to form a new centrist party and called an early election for next March. Such a new political formation with a heavyweight from each side of the political divide offered the prospect of a stable central government that could lead a coalition with political forces of the left and right who believed in pushing forward the peace process. It offered the prospect of a lasting settlement based on the sovereign rights of a new Palestinian State which accepted Israel as an immutable reality.

Who would have believed it just a year ago that Sharon would resign from Likud and form his own centrist party in tandem with Simon Peres?

Who would have believed that Peres would resign from the Labour Party he was seeking to lead just a few months back, in spite of being in his eighties, to rub shoulders with his one-time arch rival Sharon in seeking a peaceful co-existence with the Palestinians?

It is said that politics is the art of the possible but the Israeli developments in the last quarter of last year seemed to suggest that politics was even the art of the impossible.

But this week the jinx struck again. Prime Minister Sharon suffered a massive heart attack that caused brain haemorrhage and which, on first indications, would make it improbable if not impossible for Sharon to continue with active involvement in Israeli politics even if he survives the scare.

There is the grave risk that without the strength of Sharon’s personality, the new centrist party will be stillborn, leaving a vacuum that could be filled by an extremist like Netanyahu. Such an outcome will not only complicate the resolution of the Palestinian issue but will pour fuel on the fire at a time when the new President of Iran is already doing so.

With Iran proceeding with its nuclear plans at the same time that the Iranian president loudly promotes the obliteration of Israel from the Middle East and its relocation to the West, there is a very explosive situation in the making. With Netanyahu in charge at the Israeli end it could be a recipe for making the situation in Iraq look like child’s play.

I have often publicly disagreed with America’s invasion of Iraq. What has been done cannot be undone and the situation in Iraq is still fragile to be left to its own destiny. Any vacuum could well be filled with Iranian influence that would bring the show of force between Iran and Israel one dangerous step closer.

The situation in the Middle East has worsened perilously this week because of Sharon’s ill health, and it is not a good omen for world peace in 2006.