PERSPECTIVE ON ISRAEL : Give Rabin Room to Maneuver : He has a mandate for a first-step negotiation with Palestinians. The U.S. role is to prime the Arabs to go along.

Yitzhak Rabin is about to announce the formation of a centrist government for Israel. Its guidelines will include a peace initiative toward the Arabs, improvement of relations with the United States and a shifting of budgetary priorities from construction of settlements to creation of jobs for immigrants. Those who profess a desire for peace in the Middle East have in this new Israeli government their last, best chance.

Rabin will face formidable challenges from Arab fundamentalists and terrorists whose purpose is to prevent accommodation, from feckless Palestinian negotiators who lack the authority to compromise, from Israeli settlers who see their dreams coming to an end and from well-wishers who hold unrealistic expectations about Rabin’s room for concessions.

Rabin intends to go for autonomy first and autonomy fast while remaining opposed to the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s involvement in the negotiations and to an independent Palestinian state as the outcome. Rabin’s strategic objective is to negotiate an interim agreement on Palestinian self-rule that will effectively replace the outside PLO with a legitimate Palestinian leadership from the inside that has a stake in coexistence with Israel.

However, Rabin has also indicated that he does not care whom his Palestinian interlocutors consult. This reflects his understanding that the Palestinian negotiators need to maintain the protection provided by the PLO connection even as they are engaged in a process that eclipses the PLO. This nuance should not be ignored by those who want to help the peace process. Any Arab, American or European attempt to shift the PLO from the sidelines to center stage will undermine Rabin’s approach, making progress more difficult. Only if the PLO remains relegated to consultant status can the inside Palestinians concentrate on an agenda that is focused more on an effort to gain control of their own daily lives than on the PLO’s efforts to secure an independent Palestinian state.

Similarly, Rabin’s approach to the land that Israel occupied in 1967 should not be misunderstood. Rabin is a strategic thinker with a territorial approach to Israel’s security. Unlike Yitzhak Shamir, he is committed to territorial compromise as the basis for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict. But his position has already been portrayed in the American media as supporting the formula known as “land for peace.” Rabin actually objects to this formula. The only land he will swap for peace is land that, in his judgment, Israel does not need for its security.

Yitzhak Rabin could not disagree more strongly with George Bush’s post-Gulf War statement to Congress that “in the modern age, geography cannot guarantee security.” As Israel’s chief of staff in the Six-Day War, Rabin is the embodiment of the opposite principle: that in an age of Arab states boasting masses of tank divisions, geography is essential to Israel’s security. That is why Rabin says that Israel should be prepared for “territorial or other compromise” with Syria but that “we must not leave the Golan Heights.” For the same reason, he opposes “political settlements” that Likud established in the heart of the West Bank, where most Palestinians live. But he supports the “security settlements” that he himself helped establish in the Jordan valley as a tripwire for advancing Arab armies.

Land for peace and territorial compromise have become code words. The former is understood by Israelis as a call for Israel to return to the vulnerable and insecure 1967 borders. The latter is understood as a call on the Arabs to cede some of the territory that Israel occupied in 1967--in a defensive war--to provide Israel with the “secure and recognized boundaries” specified in U.N. Resolution 242. President Bush has used these interchangeably.

Rabin has a mandate from the Israeli people to take a more ambitious approach to the peace process based on security rather than ideology. Suggesting through code words that the peace process is designed to pressure Israel to withdraw to the insecure 1967 borders will only undermine Rabin with his own constituents and force him to adopt a less flexible approach. The United States needs to clarify its intent.

The biggest challenge, however, for the United States and others who would like to see peace in the Middle East is to ensure a positive Arab response to Rabin’s initiatives. Rabin’s negotiating strategy is to coordinate closely with Washington, reaching an understanding on what Israel can concede and then putting the onus on the United States to produce an Arab response. This will turn the negotiating process on its head. The Arabs will no longer have the luxury of sitting back and hoping that George Bush and Jim Baker will deliver Israel. Instead, the ball will be in their court.

Left to their own devices, the Arabs will have great difficulty responding positively to Rabin. Already, his election seems to have triggered a factional war among Palestinians in Gaza. The Syrians are nervous that Rabin’s “autonomy first” will relegate them to the sidelines. King Hussein’s unconvincing balancing act between his neighboring Iraqi bully and his patron George Bush has left him weak, exposed and unable to take the lead. And if the recent past is any guide, Egypt prefers to proceed at the pace of the most recalcitrant.

In generating a positive Arab response, Bush and Baker will have new leverage. This will be generated in part by Rabin’s initiatives and in part by Arab fear that if they do not help Bush achieve progress, they will be contributing to the chances of his electoral defeat. The Arabs universally regard Bush as more sympathetic to their concerns than the other presidential candidates. But American leverage will need to be utilized adroitly this fall, precisely when the President and possibly his secretary of state will be preoccupied with the mundane task of reelection.

It would be typical of the fickle nature of the Middle East that, at a time when an Israeli election produces the best hope for a peace breakthrough, an American election diverts the attention of those most able to exploit it. Baker has been fond of stating that it is up to the Arabs and Israelis themselves to make peace. The moment may have come to put that proposition to the test.