Israel has been invited to join the US-led international coalition against terrorism, said Israel's Prime Minister, Mr Ariel Sharon.
Speaking on Israeli radio yesterday, Mr Sharon said the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, with whom he spoke by telephone late on Sunday, told him: "If Israel wishes to join, it is certainly invited." Mr Powell, he added, "spoke in the nicest way possible". There was no American confirmation of such an offer, although Mr Powell has spoken publicly of his appreciation of the offers of support and messages of condolence he has received from Israel since last Tuesday's terror attacks. However, the inclusion of Israel in an international anti-terror alliance is bound to cause complications.
Pakistan has already made clear its opposition to Israeli participation, and other Arab states are certain to express objections as well.
A decade ago, during the Gulf war, the US asked Israel to sit on the sidelines while it confronted Mr Saddam Hussein, and Israel obliged - eschewing a military reaction even when Mr Saddam fired more than three dozen Scud missiles into its territory. The American reasoning, accepted by Israel, was that its involvement in that conflict would give Iraq the pretext of portraying it as an Arab-Israeli war - a perception that would have destroyed the alliance ranged against Mr Saddam, which included Arab participants.
This time, too, Israel's presence could alter perceptions of the conflict to the detriment of American goals. The Bush administration has intimated that Iran and Syria, for instance, might join the coalition. Their presence, presumably, would require them both to renounce terrorism and crack down on the terrorist groups to which they play host. It seems unlikely that they would be prepared to do so in order to ally themselves with a US-led coalition that also included their bitter enemy, Israel. Still, given sufficient American pressure, and depending on how bleak the alternatives presented to non-participants by Mr Bush, perhaps the changed international climate could yet produce hitherto unexpected cooperation.
Mr Sharon, for his part, said that he believed Iran, Syria and other countries that currently appear on the US list of states sponsoring terrorism, would have to prove that they had changed their positions and act to expel terror groups as a precondition for joining the coalition.
In other interviews this week, Mr Sharon has also indicated that he considers Mr Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority to be inciting "exactly the same" kind of terrorism against Israel as that now being confronted by the US - and that he would thus, presumably, seek firm international action against the PA. Mr Arafat insists that Israel is the terrorist entity in the current conflict. For the Bush administration, the best solution to that argument would be for both sides to cease fire. Failing that, the US would somehow have to reconcile its strategic support for Israel with the similarly strategic need to encourage as many countries as possible to renounce terrorism and build the widest possible coalition to that end.