Hoping Against Hope for the Breakthrough : Dogged Baker fights history, precedent, the odds; good luck

The State Department says that Secretary of State James A. Baker III has gone back to the Middle East--his third visit in little more than six weeks--because he thinks that Israel and its Arab antagonists are “serious” about pursuing the revived peace process. Presumably, Baker has reason to believe that his newest venture into mediation will advance his goal of a regional conference. Such a meeting could provide the forum for negotiations between Israel and a number of Arab states, and between Israel and a Palestinian delegation--all aimed at resolving their generations-old disputes. Is Baker’s perception correct? Peace-starved Arabs and Israelis, and all who hunger for an end to this prolonged confrontation, must hope so. For now, though, it would be best to hold expectations in check.

LACK OF CONSENSUS: Baker’s mission to try to heal the wounds of Arab-Israeli conflict has gotten as far as it has mainly because neither Israel nor any Arab state has wanted to be the first to reject it and thus invite opprobrium as the saboteur of the peace process. That amounts to something less than a ringing endorsement of U.S. goals. Baker of course knows this, and, knowing it, seems ready now to begin pressing harder to advance the process. There’s plenty of precedent for that. Every previous move away from Arab-Israel confrontation, whether the disengagement agreements that followed the 1973 war or the Camp David accords that nailed down peace between Egypt and Israel, required diplomatic head-knocking from Washington. The major differences between these earlier experiences and the situation today is that before, both sides were ready to compromise because both saw reaching agreement as serving their interests. There is no sign that this is true today.

Set aside for now what is already shaping up as long and picky procedural wrangling over the simple mechanics of any conference. Cut to the fundamentals. Israel’s conservative government, led by the Likud bloc and bolstered by several far-right fringe parties, is ideologically dead set against giving up any part of the West Bank in exchange for peace agreements. Period. The government would welcome peace with Syria, with Jordan, with Saudi Arabia. But it flatly rejects any territorial compromise, any exchange of land for peace. Some elements of the government--Housing Minister Ariel Sharon most prominently--don’t even want to talk about holding talks and flatly oppose the Baker mission. Hence, the in-your-face message delivered with the announcement, on the very eve of Baker’s arrival in Jerusalem, of a new Israeli settlement on the West Bank.

THE EXISTENCE QUESTION: And the Arabs? The Arab line for decades has been that the Palestinian issue is the central problem in Arab-Israel relations, and that until it is resolved--precisely how has been left carefully undefined--peace is impossible. With all due sympathy for what the Palestinians have had to endure, that is not quite the case. The Palestinians’ plight is largely the result of what has always been the real central issue and basis of the Arab-Israel conflict: the refusal of most Arab regimes to accept Israel’s presence, its legitimacy and its permanence--in the somewhat patronizing jargon of the day, to accept Israel’s “right” to exist. (Does anyone ever question Jordan’s or Syria’s or Iraq’s “right” to exist?)

Has there been any psychological breakthrough on the Arab side on this question of legitimacy, comparable to Egypt’s giant step in 1977? Maybe, just maybe, Baker feels that he has in fact glimpsed signs of change. If so, he could have something tangible to work with, something that might compel new thinking all the way around. Granted, that’s a big “if.” But it says something that Baker is ready to invest his prestige in testing whether his perception is right, and we hope luck is with him.