PERSPECTIVE ON ARAB-ISRAELI PEACE : Ahead Lies Progress or Catastrophe : U.S. policy will not succeed if limited to marginal issues or if it avoids the issue of ‘territories for peace.’

The decision of President Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III to work for an Arab-Israeli peace process is a watershed event. Opportunity and risk go hand in hand. From now on there will be either progress or catastrophic decline.

There is no substitute for American mediation, and any U.S. retreat without results would now correspond in diplomatic terms to what would have ensued if the coalition military forces in the Arabian desert had gone home without attaining their goals. The United States must surely be approaching its peacemaking role with a rigorous determination not to fail.

Fortunately, the Bush Administration seems now to have discarded the “ripening” doctrine that dominated U.S. policy in recent years. This theory envisaged an attitude of purposeful inertia inspired by the belief that gut issues should not be approached until the contending parties themselves converge toward a common will. It must now be evident that time is not neutral. Prolongation of the explosive territorial and administrative status quo in the West Bank and Gaza has served nobody except the fundamentalists, the extremists, the annexationists and the “all or nothing” addicts on every side.

Even the few months of inevitable suspension during the war has aggravated all the tensions. A year ago, mainstream Palestinians were advocating coexistence and King Hussein of Jordan was the focal point of an Arab consensus. These relatively benign conditions no longer exist. Faced with the choice between two evils, Yasser Arafat usually chooses both. He has managed to evoke an international and Arab revulsion almost as broad as that which Saddam Hussein created in the military arena. King Hussein lurched impulsively into an alliance with Saddam Hussein, whose temperament and values he has never shared.

These, together with the growth of radicalism in a part of the Israeli society, are real difficulties, but as President Bush has emphasized, there will be no peace process without Jordanian and Palestinian representatives. And the Israeli parliamentary system often separates policy from rhetoric when new realities present themselves, as they did at Camp David in 1977-78.

Foreign Minister David Levy seized the spirit of Israel’s reinforced security posture in declaring his willingness to hold discourse “even with those Palestinian residents who cheered Saddam Hussein.” Moreover, Syria’s capacity to attack Israel has been greatly reduced now that Damascus lacks the three conditions that made aggression so tempting in the past. It does not have Egypt attacking Israel from the south, or Iraqi armies threatening us from the east, or the Soviet Union supplying arms and a safety net in case of defeat. Damascus in closer contact with the United States is better for Israel than Syria beyond the international pale.

Secretary Baker’s efforts in 1990 foundered on the rock of Palestinian representation. This should never have been and is not now an American or an Israeli responsibility. There is no reason to repeat the bizarre spectacle of Americans and Israelis attempting to handpick “satisfactory” Palestinians. The effective solution is to leave the appointment of Palestinian representatives in the hands of cooperative Arab governments and leading Palestinian residents.

Another lesson to be learned from experience is the need to avoid making a fetish of specific techniques such as “direct bilateral negotiation.” All of the contractual successes in the Israeli-Arab context in the past decade were achieved with the indispensable aid of American mediation. This is because Israel and Arab states became willing during the successive Kissinger and Carter initiatives of the 1970s to accept from trusted mediators formulations that neither party could initiate itself or accept from its adversary.

U.S. policy will not succeed today if it restricts itself to marginal issues of procedure or avoids the central issue of “territories for peace,” which has already been triumphant in the Egyptian-Israeli context and which has universal international support as well as a large mass following in Israel.

Nor should much time be wasted on any new chicken-and-egg controversy. What comes first? Peace with Arab governments? The Palestine problem? It is a distinction without a difference. No Arab state that negotiates with Israel will have the domestic authority to refrain from projecting the Palestinian issue near the top of any agenda. The two issues of secure and recognized boundaries and the end of the state of war are explicitly linked in Resolution 242, which is bound to be the basis and framework of any peace process.

There is no value in the contention that 242 is not relevant to the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is committed by the signature of Menachem Begin in the Camp David accords to negotiate agreements “to determine the final status of the West Bank and Gaza . . . and to conclude a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan . . . on the basis of all the principles and provisions of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 242.” Israel’s contractual obligations are much closer to the international and American consensus than is much of our ministerial and intraparty rhetoric.

Although government statements in Israel, as elsewhere, are often formal and repetitive, the public discourse reveals an instinct for innovation. A leading think-tank led by mainstream security experts has formulated the principle that “Israel’s security can often be ensured by military presence without ruling over ‘all’ the territories and populations.” In the Council of Europe and on subsequent occasions I raised the idea of a “community” on the European Community model in which Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians would reconcile their political independence with a large measure of integration and mutual accessibility.

The careful exploration of new principles and structures could carry our region out of deadlock and enable it to move with the spirit and impulse of the modern age.