Arabs, Israelis: Closer Yet Further : Mideast: The process of getting the two sides to talk has only made their differences clearer.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s latest odyssey through the Middle East has brought Arabs and Israelis closer to negotiating than ever before. But it also has produced a paradox: The process of getting the two sides to talk has only made their differences clearer.

Baker briefed President Bush on the results of his sixth trip to the region this year over lunch at the White House on Tuesday and gave a largely upbeat report.

“There were predictions months ago that we’d never be this far,” Bush told reporters as he arrived at his summer home at Kennebunkport, Me. “. . . I’m much more optimistic now than I was a month ago.”

But the actions and statements of the governments that must make peace provided little apparent grounds for his confidence.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was reported Tuesday to have promised his Cabinet that he would walk out of the talks if Syria demanded the return of the occupied Golan Heights. Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shareh told a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Istanbul that that is exactly what Syria plans to do, and he flatly rejected Israel’s conditions on who can represent the Palestinians at the talks.

Their long-distance debate illustrated two fundamental problems that will bedevil the U.S. peace effort if Bush and Baker succeed in pushing the warring parties to the table. One is rooted in the Middle East’s ancient enmities, the other in the realities of domestic politics in both the United States and Israel.

First, to get both sides to agree to talk, Baker has allowed each to assert its own understanding of the premises of the negotiations--but those premises are contradictory. Syria and most other Arab states say they understand that the conference’s purpose is to secure Israel’s withdrawal from territory occupied in the 1967 Middle East War; Israel says it will not even discuss the idea of withdrawals.

The progress toward a conference “is a result more of a desire by the parties to avoid saying no to the United States . . . than a desire actually to say yes to each other,” said Martin Indyk, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank. “There is a real concern that the parties will find it very difficult to get down to business after the event occurs.”

Second, if the negotiations get under way in October, as Bush has suggested, they will almost surely run into 1992 election campaigns in both Israel and the United States. Shamir, who already rejects any compromise with the Arabs, is likely to be even less flexible with an election near, Israeli officials say. And Bush may find it politically difficult to put pressure on Israel during a U.S. election year.

Moreover, if the peace conference is to succeed, it will require constant attention from Bush and Baker, who may return to the Middle East in September. One official even suggested that Bush might have to handle some of the negotiations personally, as President Jimmy Carter did during the 1978 Camp David talks between Israel and Egypt. That could bring Bush and Baker a massive political dividend--or even a Nobel Peace Prize, as a Jordanian newspaper proposed last week. But if the negotiations go badly, it could heighten Democratic charges that Bush is neglecting domestic affairs.

During his five-nation trip, Baker dismissed questions about how the conference would bridge the enormous gap between Arab and Israeli views, saying he was approaching the process “a step at a time.”

“Nobody ever said this was going to be easy, and we fully expect that the parties will come to the table with their maximum positions--and who’s to say that’s an inappropriate negotiating tactic?” a senior official told reporters on Baker’s airplane.

“The point is, for lo these many years, they’ve never even been willing to talk to each other,” he said. “So I would submit to you that if we can see them talking to each other, that’s a heck of a lot further than we’ve ever gotten in the past. And it’s at that point that I think we have to face the next problem that surfaces.”

Asked whether the Administration has put together a strategy for making the peace conference succeed, officials repeat that, for now, they are concentrating entirely on making sure the talks occur.

But as Syria and Israel proclaim increasingly sharp disagreements over fundamental issues, the conference looks more and more like a dinner party where two bitter enemies have been mistakenly invited--and where the main question is who will throw the first punch.

On Tuesday, two Israeli newspapers quoted Shamir as telling his Cabinet that if Syria demands the return of the Golan Heights, he will leave the talks.

Meanwhile, Syria’s Shareh said his government “rejected . . . the conditions set by Israel” on the shape of the peace conference, especially Israel’s demand that no Palestinians from Jerusalem be allowed to attend. And Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat said accepting Israel’s conditions would be “capitulation.”

Baker’s achievement in getting all sides close to negotiations has rested on an artful decision to sidestep the substance of the issues and allow the Arabs and Israelis to pretend that they hear only what they want to hear.

On the key issue of “land for peace,” for example, Shamir says he is going to the conference under the understanding that Israel will refuse to discuss giving up any land. Syria’s Hafez Assad says he is going under the understanding that a goal of the conference is to force Israel to withdraw.

Baker merely says the goal is to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for Israel to turn over some occupied territory. “It is no secret to anybody that the parties will come to the table with differing interpretations of what 242 requires,” the senior official said, articulating the central paradox of the U.S. tactic. “The purpose of the negotiation (is) to determine what the parties agree that 242 will require.”

Likewise, on the issue of the future of Jerusalem, Shamir says the issue is not on the table. But Assad says it is. On the role of the Palestinians, Shamir says Israel will not talk to anyone from the PLO, but the Arabs insist that the Palestinians should be able to choose any representative they want.

The problem with that is that once negotiations get under way, either side can claim that its understanding about the talks’ purpose has been violated--and walk out.

Baker is trying to avoid that problem by making it clear he is guaranteeing no results.

If Syria demands the return of the Golan--and if the United States supports the demand even halfway--”Israel will face a very difficult dilemma,” said Marvin Feuerwerger, an expert on Israeli politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The Likud (Shamir’s party) will have to face the issue of whether or not it is willing to revise its policies on territorial compromise.”

One tip-off has been the way White House aides describe the peace effort.

When he first dispatched Baker to the Middle East in March, Bush joked that he would call the effort the “Bush initiative” if it worked and the “Baker initiative” if it didn’t.

At about the time Syria agreed to join the talks, U.S. officials settled on a term: “The President’s initiative.”