Political Lives, Too, May Ride on Mideast Summit : If fear remains high, Peres and Arafat could be on way out

The hurriedly arranged “summit of the peacemakers” scheduled to be held at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheikh this Wednesday has the worthy aim of demonstrating broad international support for the now clearly imperiled Israel-Palestinian peace process while expressing unambiguous international condemnation of efforts by Palestinian extremists to subvert it.

As much as anything else, the meeting, co-chaired by Presidents Clinton and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, will try to reassure Israelis that though they stand on the front lines in the confrontation with terrorism they do not stand alone. At the same time it will be signaling the mass of Palestinians who support the peace process that their goal of national self-determination is achievable only if militant extremism is rejected and crushed. This is a large agenda for any meeting. It is especially formidable for a one-day conference that political realities have required be put together with little time for careful preparation.

It’s fair to say that two political careers may well depend on how persuasive the implicit messages the conference hopes to send to Israelis and Palestinians prove to be. An Israeli electorate frightened and outraged by the terrorist atrocities of the last few weeks may be preparing, so opinion polls now indicate, to reject Prime Minister Shimon Peres and his governing Labor Party in national elections scheduled on May 29. If Peres and his left-center government go and Benjamin Netanyahu and the conservative Likud Party and its right-wing allies take command, the next projected steps in the peace process--including further Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank and discussions about Jerusalem’s future status--can be written off. That in turn could well make Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat largely irrelevant--both to Israel and internationally--as far as peacemaking goes. The terrorist minority among the Palestinians and the antipeace forces that support it would then have realized its objective of derailing the move toward conciliation and inviting a return to a sterile state of unremitting low-level conflict.

The White House, which is responsible for the “summit of the peacemakers” label hung on the conference, lists as its chief discussion points ways to enhance Arab-Israeli peace, to promote security and to combat terror. Among the expected participants are President Boris Yeltsin of Russia, representatives from Arab states across the wide arc from North Africa to the Persian Gulf and Western European leaders. Will concrete plans for boosting the chances of peace emerge from their talks? More likely are agreements for closer coordination of antiterrorism policies and other security-promoting measures.

If practical results turn out to be few, the symbolism of the meeting nonetheless looms large. This conference is a reaffirmation that the search for peace between Israel and the Palestinians remains a matter of profound international concern, with many countries having a stake in its successful outcome and so a direct interest in seeing that terrorist efforts to sabotage peace fail. It is a show of support for a worthy but now endangered cause. And, not incidentally, it can also be seen as an unstated show of support for the political fortunes of Peres and Arafat.