As opções do Ocidente

What Options Are Left?
Arab Nations Show No Sign of Concessions or Desire for Peace.
Por Victor Davis Hanson

For years, the Arab world clamored for the Israel "problem" to be solved. Then peace and security would at last supposedly reshape the Middle East . The Western nations understood the "problem" as being Israeli retention of lands it had captured in Sinai, the West Bank, Gaza , Syria and Lebanon after defeating a series of Arab forces bent on destroying the Jewish state.

But after the Israeli departure from Sinai, Gaza and Lebanon , and billions of dollars in American aid to Egypt , Jordan and the Palestinians, there is still not much progress toward peace. Past Israeli magnanimity was seen as weakness. Now Israel 's reasoned diplomacy has earned it another round of kidnapping, ransom and rocket attacks.

Finally, the world is accepting that the Middle East problem was never about so-called occupied land — but only about the existence of Israel itself. Hezbollah and Hamas, and those in their midst who tolerate them (or vote for them), didn't so much want Israel out of Lebanon and Gaza as pushed into the Mediterranean altogether. And since there will be no second Holocaust, the Israelis may well soon transform a perennial terrorist war that they can't easily win into a conventional aerial one against a terrorist-sponsoring Syria that they can.

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Yet for all their threats, what the Islamists — from Hezbollah in Lebanon 's Bekaa Valley to the Iranian government in Tehran to the jihadists in Iraq 's Sunni Triangle — don't understand is that they are slowly pushing tired Westerners into a corner. If diplomacy, or aid, or support for democracy, or multiculturalism, or withdrawal from contested lands, does not satisfy radical Islamists, what would?

Perhaps nothing.

What then would be the new Western approach to terrorism? Hard and quick retaliation — but without our past concern for nation-building, or offering a democratic alternative to theocracy and autocracy, or even worrying about whether other Muslims are unfairly lumped in with Islamists who operate freely in their midst.

Any new policy of retaliation — in light both of Sept. 11 and the messy efforts to birth democracies in Afghanistan , Iraq , Lebanon and the West Bank — would be something of an exasperated return to the old cruise-missile payback. Yet in the new world of Iranian nukes and Hezbollah missiles, the West would hit back with something far greater than a cruise missile.

If they are not careful, a Syria or Iran really will earn a conventional war — not more futile diplomacy or limited responses to terrorism. And history shows that massive attacks from the air are something that the West does well.

So in the meantime, let us hope that democracy prevails in Iraq , that our massive aid is actually appreciated by the Middle East, that diplomacy ultimately works with Iran , that Syria quits supporting terrorists, and that Hamas and Hezbollah cease their rocket attacks against Israel — more for all their sakes than ours.