Peril to Rabin--and Peace Process : Terrorism must not be allowed to scuttle talks

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin concedes that Israel has no foolproof defense against suicide bombers. So long as there are those who are ready to accept self-destruction as the price for murdering others, an unavoidable threat will remain. Things can be done to reduce that threat, but its elimination can’t realistically be promised or expected.

And so Israel must be prepared to face more atrocities like Sunday’s bus-stop explosions near Netanya, north of Tel Aviv. A furious and frustrated Israeli public knows that all too well. In such a climate the natural response is to demand accountability. Rabin was already in deep political trouble before the weekend massacre. A renewed sense of national vulnerability puts his future in greater jeopardy, and along with it the process that has already begun to transform the Middle East.

To its credit, the government as a first order of business has reaffirmed its commitment to seeking a political settlement with the Palestinians. At the same time Israel’s negotiating partner, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, has indicated that it will move to control Islamic Jihad, the radical Gaza-based Muslim group that claimed responsibility for the explosion. Similar get-tough promises have been made before, only to be forgotten days later as the Palestinian Authority weighed the risks of taking on militants who enjoy significant support in Gaza. This time, Arafat’s lieutenants say, they mean it. Their actions will tell.

At issue, of course, is not only Rabin’s political survival but Arafat’s and the whole of the peace process.

Islamic Jihad, Hamas and similar fringe groups violently reject the implicit premises on which the success of that process rests: the need for mutual territorial and political compromises. Israel’s right wing similarly rejects these premises. In its view, Palestinians can’t be trusted to carry out responsible agreements and Israel’s security needs do not permit any territorial changes. There’s no doubt the Israeli public, like the great majority of Palestinians, hungers for peace and a normal life. There’s no doubt either that a feeling is growing, fed by the murderous attacks of the Islamic militants and the slow pace of the peace talks, that such a peace may not be achievable now.

If that view becomes hardened in policy then all the gains of recent years could disappear, and decades might pass before the chance to seek peace recurs. Terrorism has been taking a frightful toll in Israel. But the toll if the terrorists are allowed to wreck the peace process will be more frightful still. For if terrorism wins, then all that Israelis and Palestinians will again be able to look forward to is an era devoid of hope and filled only with greater tensions, hatred and increased bloodshed.