Stubborn Illusion

Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s dogged pursuit of peace in the Middle East has yet to produce agreement on his or anyone else’s plan to settle the conflicts, but he is right to be persistent. The warring parties need to be constantly reminded that none of them have anything to gain by prolonging the stalemate, that the risks to all of them rise as they postpone serious negotiations.

The depth of the problem can be measured these days in many ways. The summit in Algiers bespeaks the vacuum in Arab leadership and ideas and initiatives that encourages those in Israel who recklessly equate the status quo with security. The Israeli Supreme Court ruling upholding the deportation of Mubarak Awad, the Palestinian-American advocate of civil disobedience to resist the Israeli occupation of Arab lands, is a measure of the depth of confusion in Israel itself over the fundamental security issues. To perceive Awad as an enemy, as a national-security risk, is to close the door on alternatives to violence.

“The belief that this can continue is an illusion,” Shultz told the people of Israel. He could have said it to the Arabs as well. The secretary of state was speaking of the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, of the frustration of the rights of 1.5 million Palestinians living under occupation. But every initiative to end the occupation has foundered on the refusal of all but one of the Arab nations to recognize Israel, to agree to respect its right to exist in peace, to negotiate secure frontiers.

So the illusion lives--in the minds of Palestinian youths who think that the barrage of rocks they have unleashed will bring back Arab sovereignty of the occupied territories, and in the minds of Israelis who think that their nation can keep the lands it has occupied and still survive as a Jewish state. Shultz has at least reminded them that they are pursuing a “dead-end” policy. That may help, in time--perhaps not this year, as Israelis go to the polls in November, as Arabs muddle past their basic differences in a futile summit. But in time, and in time probably made shorter because of the sustained effort to remind those with the most to lose what they risk by their stubbornness.