Erecting Obstacles to the Peace Process : Israeli government needs to stop fighting reality and play its cards more shrewdly

How fragile is the hope for Middle East peace that was raised at the Madrid Conference two months ago?

Certainly too flimsy to survive many more of the kinds of killings and rampages on the occupied West Bank that now threaten next week’s scheduled resumption of peace talks.

It is another case where negotiators seem too easily driven in the wrong direction by an all-or-nothing fury at the grass roots that cares more for violence than for peace.

Palestinians living in the West Bank have turned increasingly to firearms and away from less deadly weapons such as the rocks they have used to terrorize Israeli settlers during the four years of their uprising. Since the peace talks began, the new emphasis on guns has led to the deaths of four Israelis.

Israeli vigilante groups have retaliated, once with a rampage through two Palestinian villages, smashing car and store windows and leaving written death threats on signs.

The turmoil may have reached a point at which the peace process hangs on the actions of Israel alone.

The immediate threat to negotiations was an order by Defense Minister Moshe Arens to expel a dozen Palestinians linked to the Palestine Liberation Organization who the army says have been involved in violence since the Madrid meeting.

Deportation from the occupied territories is prohibited by the Geneva Convention, but the immediate problem for Israel is more serious. If Palestinian delegates attend Monday’s meeting despite the expulsion, it gives the PLO a chance to pose as a group of moderates.

The longer-term threat, of course, is the stubborn policy of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to accelerate Israeli settlement of the West Bank.

This runs contrary to the only serious chance that most observers see for peace between Israel and its neighbors--an exchange of “land for peace.”

Israel would relinquish some of the land its forces have captured over the years while beating back invasions by Syria, Jordan and Egypt. In return, it would get workable guarantees of its right to exist in peace as a nation. Yet while the peace process moves along, Israel undermines the best chance the process has to succeed by rushing settlers onto some of the land it might have to swap for peace.

The U.S. State Department condemned the expulsions Friday, adding that it is baffled that one-fourth of the Israeli housing budget was for Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip when needs were so great elsewhere in Israel. Washington also asked that the government reconsider the expulsion--a request that Jerusalem must take to heart.