A Leaderless People Can’t Make Peace : Mideast: Exploiting Palestinian weakness could make any agreements hollow.

Barring a diplomatic crisis or a disruptive act of violence, a peace conference between Israel and its Arab adversaries is likely to convene in October. Its most important objective would be to produce agreements that the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians could legitimate within their respective political communities.

Considering the political strength required to bind the Palestinian people to an agreement, it is extremely unfortunate that, following its decisions in the Gulf crisis, the Palestinian leadership has been so radically weakened. The situation could still be much worse, however, if the Palestinian leadership were to be further weakened by the processes leading to substantive negotiations.

No one can expect Israel to make concessions intended to help Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders to cut the losses they are suffering due to their policies in the context of the Gulf crisis. Still, it is not in Israel’s interest to see the Palestinian leadership disintegrate. A leaderless, violent Palestinian population is, in many respects, more dangerous for Israel than even a hated and distrusted Palestinian leadership that has the power to negotiate a binding agreement.

Israel should seek not to defeat the Palestinians but to achieve their cooperation in evolving a stable system of regional arrangements that would eventually lead to long-term coexistence. As long as Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir seeks to keep Ariel Sharon and the other radical right-wingers in the government, his policy would most likely be aimed at a Palestinian surrender rather than Israeli-Palestinian settlement.

Following the opening of direct talks, the most important signal that Shamir could send to demonstrate his intention to seek productive negotiations would be to explore the possibility of substituting his present alliance with the radical right-wing parties by another “unity government” based on partnership with the Labor Party. Such a move would be a supreme act of statesmanship, because the prime minister would increase the political risks to his own Likud Party in order to enhance the prospect of a solid Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Depending on the political circumstances in Israel, such a move may be preceded by another round of Israeli elections. As it has in the past, the Israeli public is likely to give overwhelming support to a government that can present a credible peace plan based on measures to ensure Israeli security. On the other hand, the same public may be equally receptive to Israeli leaders who argue that the Palestinians who supported Saddam Hussein are untrustworthy and no compromise with them would be reasonable.

While Israel has an interest in the existence of a stable Palestinian leadership that prefers diplomacy to violence, even forthcoming moves on the part of the Israeli government may not be sufficient to secure the emergence of such a leadership from the present crisis. In the absence of such leadership, one that can deliver a commitment to end violence and to real accommodation, it would be unwise for Israel to pay with the hard currency of substantive concessions. Still, the United States and Israel should be cautious not to exploit current Palestinian weakness to win short-term procedural victories at the cost of drastically reduced prospects for eventual agreement on matters of long-lasting substance.