The US needs to frame policies that acknowledge Arab dignity and interests, writes Eamonn Ryan
The euphoria that has swept across some sections of Western opinion since the fall of Baghdad is, at the very least, premature. We are at the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end, of the Iraq crisis.
The die has been cast - the US has overthrown a dangerous, but certainly containable, regime in Iraq and occupied the country in an unparalleled feat of arms. An astonishingly low Anglo-American casualty figure contrasts with a much larger, but unclear, number of Iraqi deaths, civilian and military, and extensive physical destruction.
The oil wells and oil ministry have been secured and much of the rest, including hospitals and the cultural heritage, left to the looters. Not the best start to winning hearts and minds in preparation for the next step: the physical and political rebuilding of the Iraqi nation. And not really the best way either to achieve the aims of a more stable, predictable and ultimately controllable Middle East oil field and enhanced security for Israel.
No newly sanitised government in Baghdad, no long-term access to new military bases will guarantee the continued peaceable flow of oil to the West if the people of the Middle East feel humiliated by foreign subjugation or by a perception of passive US complicity in Israeli policies which prolong and extend the colonisation of their Palestinian brethren.
The real dangers - of guerrilla activity inside Iraq and increased terrorism elsewhere - lie ahead, when the initial shock of the invasion has passed, and a broken Iraq, occupied by a large army of infidels, becomes a part of daily life for the Iraqis and the wider Arab world. The longer the occupation lasts, the greater chance there will be of a snowballing of violence. The attacks on Western targets in Saudi Arabia have provided a first indication of what the future could hold.
Whether the US can avoid being bogged down in a costly, increasingly hostile and ultimately unsustainable situation depends not only on how it approaches the nation-building task in Iraq but also on the fulfilment of its promise to revisit the Palestinian peace process. The key concept is what has come to be known in the Northern Ireland context as "parity of esteem".
Policies will need to be framed in a way which gives to the dignity and interests of Arabs a weight at least equal to those of Israelis and Westerners in what are, after all, Arab territories. The American approach so far to both Iraq and the Palestinians is plainly failing in that respect.
The only safe prescription for the mammoth task of rebuilding an Iraqi government is to seek, as quickly as possible, to end the occupation and to transfer responsibility to a representative Iraqi regime, even if that regime is very different to what the US would wish it to be.
It is clear that fundamentalist Shia Islam will likely be a strong if not dominant element in a freely chosen government - and there are ominous hints from US officials that such an outcome would not be acceptable to them. Given the long history of domination by the Sunni minority, it will be extremely difficult to put together a representative administration which will be proof against the danger of civil war.
It would be disastrous for the Americans to further endanger stability by yielding to temptation to permit dilution of the representative character of the government or to seek to "balance" the civil administration with a new Iraqi army dominated by elements favourable to the US. Nonetheless, one has to fear that something on those lines may be attempted if the short-term US interest is seen to point that way.
It is difficult to be any more optimistic about the US approach to the other key regional problem, Palestine, which has been a running sore in the body politic of the Middle-East for half a century. There is nothing that would do more for regional stability and good relations between the Muslim and Judaeo-Christian worlds than a solution to it.
Tragically, what has prevented that solution is perhaps less the complexity of the problem itself than a weakness of political will on the part of the US. All the raw material for a settlement is to hand - much of it was on the table during and after the Camp David Arab-Israeli talks in 2000. There is probably still (despite heavy immigration of politically conservative Jews from the former Soviet Union) a majority in Israel which could be brought to accept a settlement based on evacuation of the Gaza Strip and some 95 per cent of the West Bank.
On the Palestinian side the main negotiating obstacle - the right of return - ought to be capable of a solution comprising a symbolic resettlement in Israel of a relatively small number of refugees plus financial compensation and rehabilitation for the rest.
Despite this basic potential accommodation, both sides are mired in an escalating cycle of mutual violence and extremism.
Meanwhile, the utterly indefensible extension of Jewish settlement in the occupied territories by the Sharon government is daily increasing the difficulty in reaching a solution.
If there is anywhere a case where benevolent intervention by an outside power is needed today, this is it. There is only one candidate, the US, which is the indispensable military and economic support of Israel and the only power with the political clout to decisively influence both sides.
What is needed is sustained commitment by the US to a Palestinian settlement. What we have had are fitful stop-go efforts, varying with different administrations in Washington and with the imminence of elections. As elections approach (and in America, every second year is an election year) there is a tendency for the influence in Washington of the immensely powerful Israel lobby to have a paralysing effect on administration policy, nowadays generally in the direction of automatic support for the policies of the Israeli government.
Two things are needed: the administration should make a firm decision to place this question at the top of the foreign policy agenda; then, rather than being dominated by the forces that influence policy, it should seek to mould them into coherent support for a just and durable settlement.
The removal of Saddam Hussein's regime offers the opportunity for a sustained and energetic diplomatic campaign to push the peace process forward. As part of this, a concerted effort to secure wide support on principles and strategy from moderate opinion within Israel and, especially, pro-Israeli domestic opinion in the US, could be of crucial importance in enabling Washington to engage the government in Jerusalem, when necessary, with a vigour approaching that used towards the Palestinians.
This would certainly be a challenging and courageous policy; it seems, regrettably, out of the question, at least in the short term, given the closeness of several of Mr Bush's advisers to the Israeli right wing and his growing preoccupation with his own re-election.
It would, however, be a policy justified by weighty considerations of justice and peace. If successful, it would ensure Mr Bush's place in history more effectively than any war.
Eamonn Ryan is a retired Irish diplomat who served as ambassador in Israel and Egypt