The violence in west Asia is a reminder that the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights must be the only conquered territories in the world that have not been restored to the previous owners and are deliberately excluded from the global ethics system, as represented by the United Nations, the Hague court and other institutions devised to replace the law of the jungle with a civilized code for nations to live by. If ever there was a case for UN intervention, it is in this clash of contending sovereignties with the continuing loss of innocent lives. The mounting conflict and the withdrawal of the Egyptian and Jordanian ambassadors to Israel highlight more than the collapse of the Oslo process. They illustrate the collapse of international justice, and expose the partisan role that the United States plays while pretending to be honest broker. Let it be clear that Israel's right to live within secure borders is not disputed. 'Israel is', an Israeli friend used to say, refusing to go into legalities. Yasser Arafat and Arab governments accept that fait accompli, agreeing that there can be no return to the days before what they call the 'catastrophe' when the Zionist state was established. Second, what Israelis have done with the land - making the desert bloom, to repeat the cliché - evokes respect and admiration. Like other Asians, Indians have much to learn from Israel's experience. Third, India has done well to get out of the rut of blindly supporting the Palestinians which denied us the benefits of cooperation with Israel without compensatory dividend from oil-rich Arabs. That Pavlovian response to every controversy did not help the Arabs either. One reason that P.V. Narasimha Rao advanced in 1992 for healing the breach with Israel was that only even-handed diplomacy would enable India to take part in the reconciliation process and further the quest for a Palestinian homeland. It was a valid point, and Arafat himself endorsed it. Lacking his acumen, Narasimha Rao's successors have sat on the fence so long that their backsides must be encrusted with corns. They rush to Israel on propitiatory pilgrimages, pose theatrically at Jerusalem's Wailing Wall, brag about being courted by both sides, and pretend not to notice snubs like Saudi Arabia's cancellation of Jaswant Singh's trip to Riyadh. A few crumbs from Israel's table are thought to be reward enough. Mature diplomacy would have reminded Americans that no other nation is allowed to cling to conquered territory. India withdrew from East Bengal, recognizing indigenous sovereignty. Even apartheid South Africa gave up what is now Namibia. Moscow relinquished control of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Indonesia was obliged to pull out from East Timor. Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi people were punished cruelly and are still paying a high price for trying to swallow Kuwait. Yet, Israel remains virtually undisputed master of the territories it conquered in 1967. It returned only the Sinai peninsula, and that for three reasons. First, the blob of desert linking Africa and Asia was of no economic significance. Second, not being part of the biblical Eretz Yisrael, it had not attracted fanatical Jewish settlers. Finally, it was a small price to pay to win over Egypt, leader of the Arab world, and enable the late Anwar Sadat to break ranks with his fellow rulers and exchange ambassadors with Israel. The Israeli consul in Bombay tried to persuade me on the eve of the Gulf War that being pure as driven snow, Israel had not annexed any territory as the evil Saddam Hussein had done. That is only technically true. Whatever the constitutional niceties, Jerusalem has been incorporated into Israel - violating the Oslo accord on bilateral determination of its status - while other areas seized from Jordan, Egypt and Syria are administered as colonies. No one even bothers about their de jure status after 33 years of occupation since de facto control is entirely in Israeli hands. Until the talks broke down because of an Israeli politician's provocative gesture, the Palestinians were pleading for a homeland as if the land was Israel's to give. The entire rationale of the Oslo process is that if Arafat and company are good boys, the large-hearted Israelis might allow them to lord it over scattered scraps of territory that would one day constitute a Palestinian 'entity', never an independent nation with full authority over its own foreign policy, defence and economy. Time and again, Israel has enunciated the theory that the region can hold only one Jewish and one Arab state, and that Israel and Jordan already fill these slots. Even Shimon Peres, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in drawing up the Oslo accords, questions the existence of any such thing as a Palestinian. Palestinians are only an Arab invention, he suggests, to squeeze a third state out of the Promised Land. He sees all of west Asia as a single economic unit whose potential only the Israelis can realize. He might be right in a technological sense but economic management means political control. The federal union of his dreams would reduce Palestine to a municipality. Its 'citizens' would not be very different from today's West Bank inhabitants who go into Israel every day to work. They might be well-paid by West Bank standards but earn far less than Israelis. Worse, employment is an instrument of control. Every so often, the Israelis decide to close the border so that thousands of Palestinians are deprived of their earnings; every so often, the Israelis decide that only old men can pray at the Al Aqsa mosque so that the young are deprived of their right to worship. Though Arafat frets and fumes about sovereignty and Afro-Asian governments call him 'President' (to Israelis he is only 'Chairman') and give him head of state honours, the peace process does not promise to end this state of dependency. The persuasive opposite argument is that half a loaf being better than nothing, even a west Asian 'Banstustan' would recognize Palestinian rights. That might have been tolerable if the land had belonged to Israel. It does not. It seems to only because of the colossal deception practised by Western governments and the Western media whose sole concern is American self-interest. As Al Gore told a questioner, US 'bonds with Israel are larger than agreements or disagreements on some details of diplomatic initiatives. They are historic, they are strong and they are enduring.' George W. Bush's campaign platform was even more explicitly committed to Israel. My favourite American quotation on the subject long ago stated the reason. After he succeeded as president, Harry S. Truman lost no time in repudiating the pledges regarding a Palestinian homeland that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had given to King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia. 'I'm sorry, gentlemen,' Truman told state department officials, 'but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism; I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.' That is why the US can never be trusted in west Asia, and why peace and justice demand a UN mission and UN troops. By not speaking out for such global supervision, India has only replaced the deafening silence of one kind of pusillanimity for another. The statement it issued last month was a masterpiece of prevarication that Israelis and Palestinians alike would toss aside with contempt. Israelis show visitors the blank wall behind the speaker's chair in the Knesset and joke that Arabs believe it be decorated with a map of the Promised Land stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. No Arab has ever mentioned such a thing to me but some might if the UN stands by while the US ensures that Israel is the only country in the world to retain the fruits of conquest.