Certainly Saddam is a man who can lash himself into a fury, which feeds on his own rhetoric and unpredictable rages. He is nothing but a strutting peacock, a clown, a sly ruthless politician who plays one colleague off against another. He’s terrible in anger, pitiless in action, but he can also be a courteous and sometimes wily diplomat, charming even to his enemies. But above all else, his most terrifying feature is his unpredictability. He can change in a moment, from good humour to towering rage, from kindness to cruelty. All such men have a touch of madness in their make-up, an extra charge of imagination or a single mindedness, which makes them dangerous and difficult. Saddam is unendurably arrogant. He has a long memory and long knives. He’ll never forget nor forgive.

I do agree with what you’ve written – I know how overwhelming the effect will be if it occurs and there’s nothing that can be done politically to prevent it. I need not amplify my feelings on the matter – except to stress my dismay. Personally, I doubt if we’ll see an attitude change in the short-term. It goes deeper than what you have written. What the Israelis are doing is delaying the inevitable. The whole future of the Middle East is in jeopardy and the Israelis have to make their decision soon. I believe they have ceased to look at the world as independent observers. They have, in a sense, become obsessed with themselves. It has to do with blood and roots, and elemental loyalty. The Israelis are a people who have been under siege, scorned, rejected and hemmed in with hate for generations. Hatred is like a noose, it can hang your enemy but in the end it will strangle you also. It may be necessary to show the Israelis how deep a pit persecution and prejudice can lead. They need reminding of something they’d rather forget – their conscience. If they lose the power of forgiveness they will lose the beat of their hearts. If they cannot find the spirit of forgiveness then what I have seen will come about. The soil will not prosper but turn to dust. There is no wall, no table, and no people. Only desolation.

Will they sink into the grey, endless twilight as I’ve seen? Will they go down fighting, hurling missiles that will reshape the Middle East anew; will it give them a new morning to walk into, fearless and happy, a new world before them? What death such conflict would cause! The Middle East shattered, people and trees twisted alike for years to come. A great threat hangs over the region. I know what I’ve seen; the pictures will be seared in my memory until the final moment of my life. It is the threat of destruction on a terrible, unprecedented scale of which few will survive. There is still hope but it grows less each day and only knowing the full extent of the threat they face will it be defeated. Although there is a chance that the destruction I fear may never take place the very fact that the threat is there may be enough to doom them. They have to prevent not only the execution of the threat, but also the possibility of it ever happening.

What can we do? I’ve asked this question over and over again. It seems logical to believe that the threat is real because of what has already eventuated. Yet, I find it hard to believe that such a weapon will come out of the Middle East and that it can produce the annihilation I’ve seen. I look through the eye of time. All I know is that the answer lays within the Israelis themselves. It is they who create the threat; it is they who can stop its execution. There are none so blind as those who refuse to see but I believe there is still hope. The future doesn’t have to belong to the path I’ve seen. That’s what I keep telling myself but it doesn’t help much.