I was asked to speak about what the Gulf crisis might mean to the Middle Eastern peace process. Since we are not in the business of crystal ball-gazing, any realistic thinking and/or serious speech about what the Gulf crisis might mean for the Middle East peace process must take off from the simple truth that foresight is based on insight. I mean insight into the current crisis-situation which is loaded with both latent and active factors, forces, potentialities, opportunities, perils and so on; all capable of detrimentally affecting, modifying and even derailing and destroying the peace process in our area.

Such preliminary insight as I may have tells me prima facie that there is something ridiculous and absurd in the Sartrean sense about even mentioning the phrase “peace process” under circumstances where the entire Middle East may be about to fall victim to an explosion of unimaginable ferocity and incalculable devastation and destruction. The absurdity deepens and becomes even more sinister and ironical when one remembers that the supposed patron saint and guardian angel of the peace process itself is at one and the same time the prime antagonist in the imminent killing process that may soon engulf our part of the world. It all has the airs of Dr. Caligari's Cabinet all over again, where the keeper of the insane asylum turned out to be the craziest of all and where, as in our present case, the peace-keeper turns out to be the most bent on war. In fact he who speaks of peace in this circumstance is bound to look like some silly and trivial character straight out of a novel or play by a Kafka, a Sartre or a Beckett.

Nonetheless, we are condemned, as it seems, to brave the ridiculous and to courageously stand up to the absurd and sinister; i.e., to speak coherently and sensibly, one hopes, about the peace process and the Gulf crisis and about what they might mean to and for each other. Therefore, I promise you to be undiplomatically frank and neither to beat around the presidential bush nor to resort to euphemisms.