Link between Iraq and the Israel-Palestine Question.

Until recently I thought the attempts that are often made to link the problems of Iraq with those of Israel-Palestine were spurious. And I continue to think that, even if there were a solution to the Israel-Palestine problem, the idea that that would end either Islamicist ambitions in general or the sectarian slaughter in Iraq in particular is totally unrealistic. However, the recent talk that Britain and United States must ask Iran and Syria to help end the chaos in Iraq has established a link where none existed before. If Iran were to be willing to help, Ahmadinejad would certainly demand in exchange that Britain and America abandon all support for Israel, since his avowed aim is to wipe Israel off the map. Syria still harbours the ambition of a Greater Syria to include both the Lebanon and Israel-Palestine; but it is at least conceivable that it might agree to help in Iraq in return for Britain and the United States forcing Israel to give up the Golan Heights and probably also to allow Syria to reestablish the control which it had until the Cedar Revolution over the Lebanon and so put its Hezbollah clients in charge of that country, ready to start another round of fighting with Israel. If Britain and America accept any of these conditions, they will have given substance to a link between Iraq and Israel-Palestine which until then had been shadowy at best.

And although this might just possibly help Britain and America to withdraw from Iraq, it will only strengthen Islamicists still further, increase the existential threat to Israel's survival, will do nothing to promote peace in the region, and intensify the threat that Islamicism presents to the West.

None of this is intended to suggest that Israel should not engage genuinely in a peace process with those Palestinians who will recognize its right to exist (and with the Syrians, too), which, if it were to succeed, would inevitably mean a two-state solution with surrender of territory (in the hope - against the experience of the withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza - that any land given up would not immediately become a base for missile attacks on Israel). This has been desirable for a long time - long before the problems of Iraq raised all these spurious notions of linkage with which Britain and America are now flirting.