The Middle East continues to be the main focus of attention of the international dailies, as the wave of violence and carnage shows no signs of abating. James Bennet, writing in the Herald Tribune (13/3), starts out from a comparison between the first and the second “Intifada” to suggest the growing state of difficulty in which Sharon now finds himself. If the ratio between Israeli and Palestinian deaths in the 17 months of the first Intifada was 1 to 25, points out Bennet, in the 17 months of the second it has risen to 1 to 3: “the death toll, on both sides, is exerting tremendous pressure on Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. To put it bluntly, the Israelis are demoralized, their confidence in their prime minister has been eroded“. The Spanish press too has been devoting ample coverage to the conflict between Israel and Palestine. La Vanguardia of 10/3 carried the headline “ Stop the massacre” and argued that “ the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians cannot be resolved internally by means of negotiations: an external intervention is necessary“. The paper declared that “ if the international community was able to obtain a fragile, but stable, peace in the Balkans, it should also be possible to do so in Palestine“. According to ABC of 12/3 it’s “ the war of all or nothing” because “ both sides do not have the political will to put an end to the daily terror“. So the paper asks itself despondently: “ who can see the light at the end of the tunnel?” In El Pais of 12/3 José Vidal thinks “ that the solution to this conflict may only come from the major powers, i.e. the United States, the European Union and the Arab countries“. According to El Mundo of 11/3, “ the formation of a Palestinian state recognized by the international community needs to be accelerated. Only in this way can the opposing forces be separated and, if necessary, a peace-keeping force be deployed“. Writing in the same paper, on 9/3, Gustavo di Arsitegui recognizes that the West “ has an historical debt to pay to Palestine, which must be granted independence and create a vital, credible, stable, democratic and transparent State”. “Mister Bush and the bomb”. that’s the title of an editorial published in Le Monde (13/3) which, six months after the attack on the Twin Towers, poses questions about the eventuality that emerged from a Pentagon document formerly secret but now made public by the revelations of some American papers of a use of nuclear weapons in the fight against terrorism. In the view of Le Monde, the Pentagon document “is that of a State seized by panic and not of a power conscious of its responsibilities. It arouses fear”. The French daily sums up the contents of the American document in these terms: “It advises the President to order the development of new nuclear weapons; and maintains that the United States must be ready to use atomic mini-bombs”. Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, China, Russia: these, says the editorial, are the possible targets of the destructive power of the new weapons, whose use would represent “a complete reversal of the American nuclear doctrine”, according to which the USA “should not threaten nuclear strikes as a first response and, in any case, never against non-nuclear States that are signatories of the non-proliferation treaty”. The new document, therefore, “utterly demolishes the principle of atomic non-proliferation” and “normalizes the idea of the utilization of a weapon hitherto conceived primarily as dissuasive”. “ A hiatus in the history of the Catholic Church: Rome has spoken, continue the cultural battle“ , is the title of a critical article by Daniel Deckers in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 9/3, the day after the papal communication suspending the issuing of certificates for abortion by the bishop of Limburg, Franz Kamphaus. The strained relations between the Church of Rome and the German bishops are rehearsed, beginning with the declarations of Otto von Bismarck immediately after the First Vatican Council and culminating in the long dispute over the question of abortion, concluded in the autumn of 1999. “The exit of the diocese of Limburg from the question of marriage counsellors comments Deckers is now a settled matter. It only remains to find a way of reaching agreement between both parties“.
