When the road-map for peace in the Middle East seems a forlorn hope there seems less and less

When the road-map for peace in the Middle East seems a forlorn hope there seems less and less positive dividend that President Bush can point to as his detractors gain ground. And none of those detractors is a more potent threat than General Wesley Clark, a Democratic contender who already leads Bush in the polls. As there seems less and less prospect of discovering those elusive weapons of mass destruction, such disquiet is likely to grow. Senator Byrd of West Virginia spoke for many when he told Mr Rumsfeld:”The American people have never been told that we are going into that country to build a new nation, to build a new government, to democratise the country and to democratise the Middle East The people haven’t been told that. Elections would be held next year and a fully democratic government would then take over from the coalition occupation.

Indeed, there is just the slightest whiff of panic in the air, as Mr Powell has indicated to the press that the American government would like to see the Iraqi Governing Council frame a new constitution for Iraq within six months. Only a few weeks ago President Bush was making a determined effort to persuade the American people to stay in Iraq for the long run, Now, it would appear, the administration is preparing its exit strategy. If we can take the United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, at his word, then the American government is about to execute one of the more spectacular foreign policy U-turns of recent years. What’s more, a Morrisons-Safeways combination offers the promise of a more vigorous fourth force in the sector.Indeed, the time could be approaching when the Competition Commission might wish to revisit developments in the supermarket industry once again, although it has been examined many times before by official bodies.

The three largest chains of supermarkets already enjoy a good deal of market dominance and there seems little immediate reason to boost it. The most likely alternative – a Morrisons takeover – seems a more natural fit. First, she was wise to honour the spirit of the new regime whereby decisions on competition issues raised by mergers and acquisitions are primarily a matter for the Competition Commission, and political interference is minimised. As they and their landlords mull, we have some consolation in the contemplation of something even worse happening somewhere else: in Bhutan, they are about to ban smoking Everywhere.. A beguilingly simple solution, carrying pleasing connotations of courage and firmness, proscription can be expensive in enforcement. The frontier between licence and prohibition is a difficult one for those who choose to govern. I shall consider the following words from his 1988 article “Identity, Negation and Violence” Said’s bequeathed message: In education, politics, history, and culture there is at the present time a role to be played by secular intellectuals, call them a class of informed and effective wet blankets, who do not allow themselves the luxury of playing the identity games (leaving that to the legions who do it for a living), but who more compassionately press the interests of the unheard, the unrepresented, the comparatively powerless people of our world, and who do so not in “the jargon of authenticity” but with the accents of personal restraint, historical scepticism, and consciously, politically committed intellect.Gabriel Piterberg.

And he relentlessly sought to interact with Israelis, most prominent of which search was his deep friendship with Daniel Barenboim that yielded several musical and political projects.For me, as a non-Zionist Israeli, a historian and an individual, the loss of Edward Said’s intellectual and moral guidance, of his friendship and warmth, in a word his absence, create a void that I shall never be able to fill. He was an uncompromising critic of the sorry state of the Arab Middle East, of its lack of democracy and corrupted governments. He did not hesitate firmly to censure expressions of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial among Arabs and Muslims. He was for some time a member of the Palestine National Council, but his prophetic warnings about the fate of the Oslo process distanced him from the established leadership, though never from the fate of his people.Typically, Said never was one- dimensional with regard to Palestine/Israel and the Middle East in general. I was struck by the way Orientalism was implicated in the construction not only of the ideology of British colonialism which had dominated India for two centuries, but also of the nationalism which was my own heritage.With his transformation, Said also became the most eloquent speaker on the plight of his people, the Palestinians, their disastrous dispossession by the Zionist colonisers and their continued oppression by the state of Israel.