Mohamed Sid-Ahmed asks whether the Middle East crises are moving towards a critical turning point and, if so, to what extent and in which direction There is a misplaced sense that nothing is moving on the front of Israel's relations with the Arab world, and that this static situation can continue indefinitely. However, under the surface a number of timebombs primed to explode could shatter the apparent calm. On the Israeli-Palestinian front, there is Gaza, one of the most populous and poorest regions in the world and the hub of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation. This highly volatile mix forced Sharon to come forward with his unilateral disengagement plan, by which he proposed pulling Israeli troops out of most of the Gaza Strip as well as from four West Bank settlements. For Sharon, one of Israel's most prominent advocates of holding on to all the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, and the champion of the settler movement, this is a significant concession. On the Israeli-Egyptian front, undercurrents in the apparently static relationship between the two countries could also explode to the surface. To avoid continuous and renewed friction with Israel, Egypt signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979, in the face of strong opposition throughout the Arab world. Egypt recently broke a pattern it has followed more or less consistently over the last few decades, which is not to interfere in Arab military affairs, by proposing to train Palestinian security personnel to prevent clashes in an area in direct contact with Egypt. It could be argued, of course, that such a step serves the Palestinian cause, but it certainly also reinforces Egypt's ability to overcome hostile confrontations in case Israel pulls out of Gaza. Apprehension that the spiral of violence in which the region is now caught is eventually bound to impact adversely on Egypt's peace with Israel has come to overshadow all other matters, including the Palestinian problem which stands at the very heart of the conflict. This fear has become the driving force behind a determination to overcome the present catastrophic situation by transforming immobility into motion and reinvigorating a negotiation process. No longer is the Palestinian problem alone the threat to security and stability, but also, and possibly mainly, growing tension along the borders between Israel and Egypt. It has become imperative to contain the situation before it gets out of hand. Can this new and dangerous dimension ultimately serve the cause of peace and stability? The mechanism now prevailing generates the very opposite of stability. It is a mechanism which builds security on military occupation, not on independence and/or national sovereignty. There is a great deal of talk these days about sovereignty, but it is actually about a distorted, truncated form of sovereignty. For example, how can there be talk of a sovereign Palestinian state when that state will be deprived of an army to defend its borders? How can there be talk of Iraqi sovereignty when foreign forces are to remain stationed on Iraqi soil for an indefinite period of time, regardless of the will of Iraqi institutions, let alone of the ordinary citizen? The common denominator shared by all the crises in the region is the formula that security must be guaranteed by military occupation, even if the occupiers studiously avoid using the word "occupation" and talk in lofty terms of "sovereignty" and "independence". What is new in the Middle East is that we are no longer facing one, but several crises simultaneously; if we take into consideration what Bush calls the Greater Middle East, we would be dealing with three crises at least (in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan). In all these cases, we face security problems whose solutions are believed to reside in US military occupation. Globalisation, the result of amalgamating wide areas into huge geographical units, is now accompanied by a phenomenon of militarisation, which, like it or not, subordinates peace to the imperatives of militarisation and war. The changes underway have resulted in unexpected developments. For example, a contradiction is now developing between two groups within the Israeli far-right, one that endorses Sharon's disengagement plan and another that opposes the plan as a betrayal of all that the Likud stands for. This has placed Sharon in a very difficult position. In the hope of rallying his party around him, Sharon held a referendum between its registered members only to suffer a resounding defeat. To gain parliamentary support for his plan, he will have to depend on Arab members of the Knesset, a group to which he certainly does not want to be obligated. He tried to avoid that pitfall by modifying his initial plan, but the modified version can hardly be said to qualify as a disengagement plan. Whether in the case of a Likud or a Knesset vote, the results are detrimental to Sharon. Will he find himself forced to hold early elections? Is this the beginning of his end as a politician? And what of Sharon's nemesis, Arafat? Would he be willing to follow the example set by Gaddafi and adopt a line of systematically repudiating anything the US administration could describe as terrorism? Can he make it impossible for the US to go on rejecting him as a valid interlocutor? Would Egypt support him in such an enterprise? Could Arafat, in counterpart, demand that Israel lift the siege on him in Ramallah and allow him to restore his previous freedom of movement, in his capacity as Palestine's legitimate, elected leader? The results Gaddafi has achieved in his new persona suggest that this is not an impossible scenario. Paradoxically, Sharon is at risk of becoming isolated, while Arafat is poised to restore his leadership role. In the final analysis, however, this will depend on the inter-Palestinian debate and on whether the Palestinian factions can stand united in face of the critical challenges ahead. The real reason Arafat has escaped the fate of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdul-Aziz Al- Rantisi and other leaders of the Palestinian resistance movement is that he enjoys widespread support among the Palestinian people and is thus capable of adopting unpopular stands when critical decisions will have to be taken. That is why he enjoys some form of immunity. Sharon's personal antipathy for the Palestinian president coupled with the latter's potential usefulness has led to a bizarre situation in which Arafat is confined to two rooms of his shattered compound but allowed to receive prominent dignitaries from all over the world! Then there is the crisis in Iraq. The interim government has been formed but sovereignty will remain suspended until elections are held, supposedly no later than next January. It is doubtful, however, that full sovereignty will be restored even after the elections, because foreign troops are expected to remain until security is established, that is, for "a very long time" to come, as top US officials have themselves admitted, whatever other promises to the contrary. Iraq's new foreign minister has asked the Security Council to include a provision in the new draft resolution on Iraq offering the country complete sovereignty after the 30 June deadline. But the minister did not go as far as to raise Iraq's right to oppose major military operations conducted without its approval. A number of Council members, including Russia, France and China, insisted that the text of the draft resolution provide for the Iraqi government's right to veto any major military operation inside Iraqi territory. Such a debate underscores that Iraqi sovereignty is perceived as something that can be divided, which contradicts the very concept of sovereignty. So how credible is the debate over the key issue of sovereignty, and how far will it go?
