-- The Bush administration's frustration with the growing death toll in the Middle East is understandable. But Secretary of State Colin Powell's harsh criticism of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's tough strike-back policy is both surprising and shortsighted. Powell's public criticism seemed to suggest - erroneously - that Sharon had declared war against Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
"If you declare war on the Palestinians and think you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed," Powell told Congress Wednesday, "I don't know [whether] that leads us anywhere."
Certainly, it's surprising language - given the military campaign the United States is waging in the same region against al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Like America, Israel is fighting a war imposed on it by terrorists determined to obliterate their enemy. American forces, rightly, aren't practicing restraint in Afghanistan. Should Israel?
When Sharon told Israelis last week that "we are in a war," he was simply acknowledging the situation on the ground - and making clear, as he said again yesterday, that Arafat, "who initiated the war, has the power to stop it."
Indeed, a headline in yesterday's New York Times spoke to the reality of the situation. A profile of Marwan Barghouti, a top leader of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction, was headlined: "For Fatah, Only a War Can Bring Peace to Mideast."
And that's the problem: While Powell & Co. rightly demand that Arafat "make a maximum effort" to end the terrorist war he's unleashed, there's been little in the way of actually holding his feet to the fire.
Powell's admonitions, and those like President Bush's yesterday to both Arafat and Sharon, have done nothing - nothing - to curb Palestinian attacks. But publicly criticizing Israel's exercise of self-defense only tells Arafat that his tactics are working - and that, ultimately, Sharon will be pressured to roll over.
Surely, anyone criticizing Israel for its defensive policies has an obligation to suggest a meaningful alternative to rein in Palestinians' bloody offensive ones.
As the Israeli writer Hillel Halkin wrote last fall in The Wall Street Journal: "If you have better advice for Israel, feel free to give it. Just don't tell us it's our duty to die."
