Vanunu who?

Released on Wednesday in his 18th year in prison, 11 of which were in solitary confinement, a 49- year-old Christian walked out of the gate of Shikma prison in Ashkelon, in the state of Israel. He greeted the world awaiting him in suspense, barely ever having seen him before, with two hands raised, fingers forming the traditional peace sign. "I am Mordechai Vanunu," he declared. "I am proud and happy to do what I did."

What that was cannot be forgotten, even if it has yet to result in tangible effect.

Twenty years ago, Vanunu was known to have been a student radical who had been involved in the peace movement. In 1985, while working for the Israeli government in a place called Dimona, he became a 'whistleblower'. He exposed details of Israel's nuclear weapons programme in the plant there. He did so in an article he submitted to the Sunday Times.

The Israeli secret service, the Mossad, learned of the article. Before it appeared a secret agent cod-named 'Cindy' lured him to Rome. There he was drugged and shipped back to Israel. Once there he was jailed for treason and espionage.

He remained cut off from the world and, one can practically say, humanity for 17 years and five months.

His article was published in 1986.

Immediately he was released Vanunu, still within the gates of the prison, and proclaiming himself to the waiting international media, made his position clear.

"I am happy and proud to do what I did," he stated.

He claimed that his jailers had been cruel and barbaric. He alleged he had survived despite attempts by the authorities to drive him mad.

Vanunu said: "You... Mossad didn't succeed. You didn't succeed to break me, to make me crazy. The target of 18 years in isolation was to make me crazy."

He added that in the past few weeks he had been put back in isolation and many of his belongings had been taken from him.

If the authorities had really tried that, it was very apparent that they had not succeeded. Vanunu stepped out of prison clearly in command of himself, and possessing an indomitable spirit.

He was articulate and sharply focused on what had landed him in the Mossad's net, and prison, in the first place.

He stepped out into relative freedom - the Israeli authorities will not allow him to leave the country for six months. Why?

Speaking to the media he dismissed suggestions that he had to be forbidden from talking to foreigners in case he had further nuclear secrets to divulge.

"I don't have any secrets," he said. "Since the article was published (in 1986) there are no more secrets. All the secrets are in the hands of the world..."

The 1985 whistleblower was of the opinion that Israel did not need nuclear arms, especially now that the Middle East was free from nuclear weapons. He said that the Dimona reactor should be opened for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

He promised he would continue to speak out against nuclear weapons and called on the leaders of the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom to do the same.

Vanunu had better not hold his breath in that latter regard. The passage of time since he was thrown behind bars for his courage has seen international condemnation of and action against the development of nuclear weaponry, and the capability there for.

And thank goodness for that, and for the fact that so many governments have renounced to weapons of mass destruction.

Israel, though, is another matter.

A young state that was initially threatened with extinction by neighbouring Arab countries soon developed advanced technology and weapons, including a nuclear capability, to let its bristling arsenal and frightening potential be a warning that it would not be cowed because it was heavily in deficit in terms of sheer numbers.

It would be foolish and unfair not to acknowledge that for many years Israelis not only perceived but also actually faced a real threat to their survival. Several wars, all of which saw Israel emerge hugely victorious, testify to that.

It remains just as foolish and unfair not to acknowledge that times have changed. Arab states now accept the state of Israel as a fact of life, even if many individual Arabs remain resentful of that fact.

Their feelings, and the call to terrible arms and methods of fundamentalists and other extremists, are not of the type that needs to be countered by nuclear capability, though Israel too requires the means to defend itself from terror and any eventual threat from some rogue regime.

Tension and danger in the area so paradoxically called the Holy Land are of a different nature. At the heart of them lies a denial to the Palestinians of a right that Israelis have fought so harshly, with the early means of terror as well as with valour - the right to their own land and statehood.

Israel is not powerful enough to stop acts of terror against its citizens by Palestinians and sympathisers who have no faith in any means but terror. But it is strong enough to continue to occupy with diplomatic impunity land that it ought to have handed back to the Palestinians, and to come up with shameless plans to hold on to such parts of occupied land as it feels it requires while going through the motions of handing unwanted land back to the Palestinians.

If such action can be rationalised in Israeli terms, even allowing for the extreme hardness and harshness of the current prime minister, it can never be rationalised in terms of the basic concepts of humanity, of justice and international relations.

Yet that is what the so-called leader of the free world, the US president, continues to do.

Not for him one weight, one measure, such as pressure on Israel to give up weapons of mass destruction equal to that exercised on Iraq, Iran and Libya.

Not for the American president clear-cut condemnation of acts by Israel that merely continue to solidify and broaden the circle of hate, terror and violence that grips the area.

Acts carried out according to the ancient vow of an eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth, and which go beyond any reasonable objective of deterrent and self-protection.

Instead, the US president gives in to the pressure of the Israeli prime minister who, a few days ago, went so far as to humiliate him by staying at the airport and not taking off for their planned meeting in the White House until he received word of the assurances he required.

After three hours the mighty American president caved in. The tough, wily Israeli prime minister embarked on his flight.

Not many hours later President George W. Bush committed the US to endorse Israel's plans to continue to occupy the West Bank.

He did so despite widespread condemnation of such occupation by the rest of the world, ranging from anger and token gestures at least by Arab leaders friendly to the US, like those of Egypt and Jordan, to perfunctory bleats from the British government, whose prime minister never tires of playing cuddly lamb to the American president.

When and where will it end? In Israel itself there may not be many whistleblowers like Mordechai Vanunu, whose action in 1985 and his long years of imprisonment were dramatic yet sadly futile in terms of hard results.

But there is a strong lobby that rejects its prime minister's hardness, that condemns the tactics of terrorism by Palestinians, but sees and admits to their trampled rights and bravely presses for mutually just remedies.

Outside Israel there are myriad individuals, of various race and creeds, including one who goes by the name of Pope John Paul II, who clamour for deep, honest reflection, for sensible proposals, for tangible contributions to justice as the only possible road to peace.

There are whole people and their governments who, though they do not justify and incessantly condemn terrorism, insist that a just peace requires a change of track by the Israeli government, especially with regard to the land to which the Palestinian people are entitled.

There is also the mysterious commitment of a large part of the American class, especially of president Bush, to refrain from calling injustice by its proper name, and discouraging it at the very least by withholding their approval to the Israeli government.

Mordechai Vanunu did not walk out of 18 years in prison into some brave new world...