Powell Strong, But Not Enough

We applaud Secretary of State Colin Powell’s recent intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We also believe that the Bush administration must formulate a coherent policy for furthering Middle East peace or else be forever reacting to crises of this sort. The fighting that has been smouldering over the past months threatened to erupt into more wide spread violence when detachments of the Israeli Army occupied portions of the Gaza strip almost two weeks ago. The aggressive movements by the Israelis came in response to mortar attacks fired against Israeli settlements from the Gaza region.

The assault on the Gaza strip, carried out by land, sea and air forces, represented a drastic escalation of the ongoing unrest in the region. Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered Gaza and appeared to start building camps and fortifications in preparation for a prolonged occupation. Within a few hours of Secretary Powell’s stinging rebuke, however, Israeli forces were heading back across the border.

Undoubtedly, Secretary Powell’s strong and entirely appropriate action saved many lives and ensured that the current uneasy standoff did not erupt into a wider and more tragic conflict. The fact remains, however, that the Bush administration has not articulated, let alone put into action, any strategy aimed at getting the Middle East peace process back on track. Powell’s reaction was just that, a reaction. The United States has vital national security interests at stake and a peaceful, prosperous Middle East is what our foreign policy should be striving for.

Even with the highly touted foreign policy team that Bush has assembled, his administration has yet to take pro-active action in the Middle East. Now that the land for peace framework for achieving peace has apparently crumbled, the task going forward should be to involve both sides in the conflict in finding a new framework. So long as there is no clear idea about how to achieve peace Secretary Powell will continue to have to try and defuse crises in Israel.