LAST WEEK, Spain undertook its largest unilateral military operation since 1939. In the wee hours of July 17, 28 Spanish special forces, backed up by four naval vessels and six helicopter gunships, reconquered the 500-yard-long uninhabited island of Perejil, part of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the north African coast, which a dozen Moroccan soldiers had occupied for six days.

Was the island worth fighting for? Yes, if you think of it as the place that Homer used in the "Odyssey" as the model for Ogygia, the paradise where Calypso keeps Odysseus entranced for seven years in her enchanted grotto. No, if you consider that the grotto is now used as a hideout for drug traffickers and that the island is given over to goats and sheep rowed out to the place by locals to avoid paying shepherds. Spain debated simply giving up the island as recently as 1994.

Obviously, what arose with the Moroccan occupation was a question of principle. Here is what happened. On the afternoon of July 11, during the wedding celebrations of Morocco's young king Mohamed VI, a dozen Moroccan soldiers landed on the island and raised their country's flag. Spanish officials believe the king ordered the incursion himself. Whatever the case, it violated Spain's sovereignty. Ceuta and Perejil have been under European rule since 1415, when a Portuguese protectorate was established there. Spain took over those and other Mediterranean possessions at different times in the seventeenth century. Under a bilateral agreement made by Spain and Morocco in 1960, neither country is to establish permanent settlements there. When Spanish civil guards approached the island, they were held off at gunpoint.

Spain sought to resolve the standoff through diplomatic channels. First, it requested an explanation from Morocco. This request was met with silence. Then European Commission president Romano Prodi and the Danish government, which controls the European Union's revolving presidency, requested the removal of Moroccan troops. This request was met with derision. The Moroccan minister of foreign affairs, Mohamed Benaissa, called the international press together and attempted to treat the situation as a joke. The maneuver, he said, was merely an operation aimed at foiling smuggling and controlling illegal emigration from Morocco. "We're not going to invade the island with a dozen soldiers," he added, as the Moroccan flag waved over Perejil. Then NATO issued a communiqu describing the Moroccan occupation as an "unfriendly act."

Days of negotiations followed, in which American envoys played an informal role, exerting heavy pressure at the royal wedding festivities. When Morocco affirmed it had no intention of removing its soldiers, Spain attacked at dawn on July 17. It captured all six Moroccans remaining on the island.

As is usual when the First World comes in violent conflict with the Third, the responses were asymmetrical. Morocco and its allies in the Arab League made mighty claims of implacable irredentism. Morocco called the Spanish operation a "flagrant act of aggression." The newspaper Aujourd'hui le Maroc said the raid "revealed to the world the true face of a Spain that is dominating, arrogant, and colonialist."

Spain, on the other hand, proclaimed a desire to compromise even as its troops were landing. It promised to pack up and go home if Mohamed VI would only give a "clear and unambiguous statement" that he would not invade again. He refused. Then Benaissa let drop in an interview with SER radio that Morocco wouldn't reinvade if Spain simply left. The Spanish government said it would indeed leave if only the Moroccans would make that same statement officially. They wouldn't. Spain's minister of foreign affairs, Ana Palacio, reiterated that her country was ready to leave the island. "We just don't want a Moroccan politics of faits accomplis," she said.