Netanyahu-Arafat Handshake Was Only a First Step

With a hesitant handclasp, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat may have rescued a Middle East peace process that was in danger of disintegrating.

But without immediate, intensive discussions on the substantive issues that divide the two sides, this week’s meeting will remain symbolic--significant only because it marked the first recognition of the Palestinian leadership by the Israeli right wing.

“This is only a beginning,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said after the hourlong session Wednesday night. “Let’s judge it on our ability to put the peace process back on track on the ground.”

Uri Savir, the Israeli diplomat who led his country’s breakthrough negotiations with the Palestinians in 1993, said he was disappointed that the talks ended with no concrete progress, “simply with an agreement to disagree.”

There was no headway, for example, on the timing or specifics of Israel’s overdue pullout from Hebron, a volatile city that is the only major population center in the West Bank still occupied by Israeli troops.

Other outstanding matters include security arrangements and Israel’s 6-month-old closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Long-term issues are thornier still, including Palestinian aspirations to create an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Netanyahu, in a speech to the leadership of his conservative Likud Party on Thursday, reiterated previous statements that his government will never allow the establishment of a Palestinian state or the division of Jerusalem.

Still, Savir said, the meeting between Arafat and Netanyahu at the Erez crossing point between Israel and Palestinian-controlled Gaza represented a “very significant first step.”

In attending the meeting, Savir said, “the Israeli prime minister has recognized reality,” accepting the idea that any peace negotiations with the Palestinians must begin with Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization chairman who was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in January.

Such recognition, the diplomat said, is likely to lead to another reality: that the peace process, in order to survive and progress, must include the step-by-step implementation of agreements that have already been signed.

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“It’s very important to build trust and to constantly keep the dynamics of the process moving forward,” Savir said.

Savir applauded Netanyahu’s courage in publicly reneging on a vow never to meet the Palestinian leader. Although Israelis have become accustomed in recent years to their leaders meeting Arafat, many still brand him a terrorist, unworthy of such recognition.

“I wouldn’t underestimate the difficulty of that for Mr. Netanyahu,” Savir said.

Overall, the meeting between Arafat and Netanyahu is considered likely to jump-start the negotiations, which have been stalled since Israel’s May 29 election. Netanyahu defeated Prime Minister Shimon Peres of the left-leaning Labor Party in a vote widely viewed as a referendum on the pace and future of Middle East peace.

“The talks reinforce the idea of peace as the dominant reality of our time,” Joseph Alpher, the director of the Israel and Middle East office of the American Jewish Committee, said in Jerusalem. “It’s so overwhelming, in fact, that even Netanyahu, after 80 days in office, has had to do an about-face on the subject.”

For Arafat, the meeting represented a formal, if grudging, acceptance of him as a peace partner by the hard-line Likud Party, as well as an implicit recognition that he is the elected leader of the Palestinian people. After three years of peacemaking with the Labor Party, Arafat is now free to talk to its political rivals as well.

But the relationship with Likud is unlikely to be as warm as the one Arafat had with Labor. A political cartoon in the English-language daily Jerusalem Post on Thursday poked fun at Netanyahu for his obvious discomfort during the meeting, showing him gingerly extending his little finger to Arafat.

Still, some saw the handshake as potentially far-reaching. Galia Golan, a founder of the nonpartisan, leftist group Peace Now, said recognition of Arafat will make it more difficult for Netanyahu and other Likud leaders to dismiss Palestinian nationalist claims out of hand.

“That’s why some people in the Likud Party are upset,” Golan said. “They understand that you can’t recognize the leader of a national liberation movement and then deny that they have rights.”

But some Palestinian analysts criticized Arafat for agreeing to meet the Israeli leader too quickly, without any guarantee that agreements already signed by the two sides will be implemented without further delays.

“Why have we decided to go along with this as Palestinians?” West Bank political scientist Khalil Shikaki asked. “There has been no agreement on any of the issues of substance, but we’ve allowed the meeting to take place and [have] eased the pressure on Netanyahu. Why?”

Since Netanyahu’s election, Palestinian journalists have criticized the governments of Egypt and Jordan for receiving the new prime minister without gaining any specific commitments from his government on the peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

“Now we’ve done exactly the same thing,” Shikaki said. “The Palestinian press has created a perception that things are moving forward on the peace process, and I think that’s the wrong message. Netanyahu has made no real compromises yet, except on the symbolic, ideological level.”