by Kevin Carey

G21 Editorial Columnist

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Kevin Carey

SUSSEX, ENGLAND, UK - The old tale of Pericles, Prince of Tyre (adapted by Shakespeare and another) opens with the wily King of Antioch setting the fresh young Prince a riddle; if Pericles solves it he will win a bride, if not he will have his head chopped off. This story is refreshed in me every time an Arab diplomat says that the United States will not be loved until it has solved the Israel/Palestine problem. Mr. Bush, who is popularly supposed to be extremely ignorant in general and of all things Middle Eastern and Islamic in particular, is thus being deliberately posed a riddle which it is assumed he cannot solve. You would have to call this cynical if it were not silly. The only riddle solving equipment which Mr. Bush is supposed to possess is his armed forces and his aid budget but he is routinely chided for using these as foreign policy levers. At the very least, then, we are faced here with some special pleading.

Mr. Bush - let us put this bluntly now to save misunderstanding later - is being asked by a gaggle of corrupt, dictatorial fissiparous quasi-nations to use the threat of reduced aid to weaken the democratic state of Israel in the name of the United Nations which, a sad harbinger, created it but did not have the power to guarantee its security within secure borders.

Let us, then, grant that Mr. Bush and his European allies may be able to restrain Israel for a fixed period from building its iniquitous settlements and perhaps even from retaliating against suicide bombers. What will the Arab League and its Member States undertake to do in parallel? They, after all, could be expected to understand Palestinian political, security and terrorist intricacies much better than Bush and his allies. I hear nothing. I have heard nothing since 1948; I expect to hear nothing.

The Israelis, foolishly in my view, have democratically elected a government which specifically promised to use its army against terrorists. Once the Clinton peace initiative broke down with the collusion of Sharon and Arafat, both thought they would increase their respective political grips on their people; Sharon was right, Arafat wrong; but that should not distort the symmetry of the intent. Now Arafat, blessedly weakened by the inception of a new political system including a cabinet headed by Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, will be asked to accept the same terms which the Arabs turned down in 1948 and which he turned down in 2000 when they were offered by Barak. That is what the modishly termed 'road map' is all about. The means may be different, the ends the same.

I can just about imagine Israel accepting the terms of the Road Map after an almighty degree of grumbling, shuffling and obfuscating. It will be a grudging and ungracious sight. I can also just about imagine the Palestinians accepting the Road Map, too - with no more grace than Israel but with less certainty of being able to implement what they promise. What I cannot imagine is a state of affairs where the Palestinian authorities, or anybody else for that matter, can control the terrorists who strike in proportion to the prospect of peace; the better the chance, the harder they strike. This form of terrorism is nothing to do with the struggle of the politically frustrated; it is, rather, a condition which arises when people come to depend on what they do to give their life and death some meaning. What is there for terrorists to do if there is peace?

Let me now continue with the story of Pericles. He solved the riddle and the response of King Antiochus was not to offer him his daughter in marriage but to plan to kill him for solving the riddle. What advantage would there be to Mr. Bush and the United States if he was somehow to solve the problem of Israel and Palestine? There are no votes in it, no oil in it, no democratic dividend likely in the region, no thanks and certainly no gratitude. The only reason Bush can possibly have for using his time and energy in this enterprise is because he thinks it is right to try. He is largely led in this by Prime Minister Blair who thinks it is right to try because, unlike Bush, he and all leaders of left of centre political movements, have forces within their parties or coalitions which regard the resolution of the issue as a matter of principle.

They, rightly, believe that the two state solution is the only viable objective but they, wrongly, believe that the Israeli withdrawal from recently constructed settlements will automatically bring security guarantees even though it could never obtain concessions in the long periods of Labour Party rule when it was quiescent. What sort of politician is it who thinks that you get what you want by doing what your opponents want? So Blair has the problem that many in his own Labour Party have a well motivated but decidedly hare-brained methodology for bringing peace to the region. The only alternative open to him and, by extension, open to Bush (who may need Blair again) is to agree to the political objectives of 'the left' without accepting their naive prognosis.

Personally, I would have none of it. It is never gratifying to lose to a good opponent but it is soul-destroying to lose a game of chess to an idiot. I would hand the riddle back to King Antiochus and graciously wish him joy of it. If the Arab League wants to solve the Israel/Palestine problem as urgently as it says it does, let it take the lead in extracting a measure of good behaviour in Palestine and Bush and the Europeans will then leverage Israeli reciprocity. The United States saved Israel's neighbours from catastrophe in 1956 and 1973 and has been trying to broker some kind of peace ever since. It's time for somebody else to run from the front so that Bush and his allies can settle down and run with the pack for a while.

What makes matters more difficult now than at the beginning of the Clinton push is that Sharon's maliciously calculated walk on the Temple Mount not only destroyed the prospect of peace, not only destroyed the hitherto popular Barak administration, but also destroyed the Israeli Labour Party as we have known it since the foundation of Israel.

People who live in the historical duopoly of the United States simply cannot understand how political parties, particularly of 'the left' tend to fragment when they are badly beaten. The resignation of Amram Mitzna as Labour leader came after only six months during which his parliamentary colleagues did not give him a day of peace. Instead of two or perhaps three strong contenders for his place there are seven or eight weak aspirants, none of whom will be able to command the others once he wins. The only alternative is Peres acting as caretaker, all of which leaves Sharon with a clear run for as far ahead as anyone can see.

There was just a chance in 1999 that the two major parties in Israel would agree on constitutional changes to raise the floor for representation in the Knesset from 5% of the popular vote, thus curtailing the disproportionate power of minor parties but now the only hope of strong opposition to Sharon is the painful realignment of the Israeli left to form a new Labour coalition.

So, putting all the pieces together, we have a democratically unassailable Sharon in Israel, a Militant Bush seeking re-election in the United States on an anti-terrorist ticket, a divided Europe, a re-constituted Palestine and a loose collection of Middle Eastern countries trying to come to terms with the new geopolitical situation brought about by an allied victory in Iraq. These are strong negative forces pitted against the unfocused and often ill informed moral outrage which forms the basis for most support for the Palestinian cause.

Yet there is hope, one factor bigger than all the others, which will push the President to almost unlimited lengths to gain peace; a dangerously insecure Saudi Arabia.

No-one knows better than Bush - and here we have to concede that his personal knowledge outstrips all contenders - how parlous is the state of the Saudi regime. His administration has done absolutely everything in its power - including withdrawing its own troops from the Kingdom - to shore up a tottering regime. It has even turned a blind eye to the involvement of known Saudi plutocrats and diplomats with Al Qaida, although after the bombings on the eve of Secretary of State Powell's visit (13.v.03) an Interior Ministry sympathetic to terrorism might be more difficult to ignore. What the State Department cannot hope to handle is a simultaneous conflagration in Palestine and the implosion of the Saudi Kingdom which become symbiotic.

Viewed dispassionately, the Palestine problem would be easier to solve than the Saudi collapse and so Bush is in a race against time. He has to quieten Palestine so that it is not such a cause celebre when Saudi Arabia is plunged into chaos. Of course, the happier scenario would be a solution to the Palestine problem which allows Saudi Arabia and other Middle East States to be honest with their own peoples as the incubus of Palestine slowly dissolves. Nobody in Washington is banking on this.

Let us conclude the tale of Pericles. Still in flight from the murderous Antiochus, he lands at poverty stricken Tharsus and hands over ship loads of grain. He then takes ship and is wrecked, landing on the coast of Pentapolis where his gallantry wins him the hand of a princess. She dies giving birth at sea and so the stricken Prince takes the baby to his friends in Tharsus who show their gratitude, once he is forced by affairs of state to go home to Tyre, by attempting to murder his child. Does any of this sound familiar? Might Europe be Tharsus, starving, saved, trusted then treacherous? How will the European Union react to a crisis in Saudi Arabia? Too right? I wouldn't count on it.

And what of Pentapolis where Pericles won the hand of the Princess in a fair fight, would it be fanciful to think of this as the world-at-large, epitomised by the United Nations? In the story, once Pericles leaves Pentapolis and the "Good King Simonides" it does not figure again. If the Security Council had a problem over Iraq which it could not ultimately solve then over Saudi Arabia it is doomed. Europe, as a force in world geopolitics, will be no better. So the United States will continue to be stuffed with the world's wealth while it is saddled with the world's troubles. A fair trade-off, some would think, but a dangerous one. The Saudi crisis will be pivotal in a way in which Iraq was not. Empires survive on soldiers and imports, the former securing the de facto right to the latter. The days of the diplomatic minuet are over. America will fight while Europe dances.

At the end, Pericles is united with his wife who was saved from death by a sorcerer and with his daughter who was saved from death by pirates who sold her into prostitution where her virtue prevailed. In our world there will be no sorcerers, no Deus Ex Machina factor to put everything right. Ominously, perhaps, the daughter of our once fresh but now much travelled Prince, with whom he was united, was named Marina.

KEVIN CAREY is social entrepreneur, economist and Director of the UK's humanITy. He can be reached via e-mail at "humanity@atlas.co.uk".

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