High-Stakes Meetings in the Mideast Crisis

There is apparently no agenda for the urgent White House talks on saving the Middle East peace process, not even a certainty that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority’s Yasser Arafat will meet. Nor is there any assurance that out of this hastily arranged gathering will come a renewed commitment to negotiating an end to the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All that’s clear is that a scheduled two days of meetings will begin today, prompted by Washington’s deep worry that the American-sponsored peace effort may be close to collapse. If that effort in fact fails, much of what U.S. diplomacy has labored to achieve in the Middle East since the end of the Persian Gulf War could be washed away.

This week’s meetings are only incidentally about the eruption of violence in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank that was brought on by Netanyahu’s provocative decision to open an archeological tunnel in East Jerusalem and made worse by Arafat’s inflammatory claims that the tunnel threatens to undermine nearby Islamic holy sites. What was perhaps most significant about last week’s clashes is how starkly they revealed the persistence of distrust between Israelis and Palestinians and the readiness--even, it seemed, the eagerness--of both sides to fall back on extreme rhetoric in support of their positions. As a result, much of the good that emerged from confidence-building measures in recent years has been lost.

Now, as always, resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires that each side be ready to settle for less than its maximum goals. Each must recognize the irreducible needs of the other--security for Israel, a self-governing national entity for the Palestinians. Leaders on both sides must prove themselves worthy of their responsibilities of office by having the historical vision and the political courage to shape a domestic consensus behind the hard decisions they must make.

Nothing is ever really over in the Middle East, and even if the White House conference fails to restart substantive negotiations, the last chapter in this drama will not have been written. But failure would virtually guarantee the continuation of militant confrontations and with them a deepening of the most uncompromising attitudes. Washington understands how high the stakes are. In a few days the world will know whether Arafat, Netanyahu and their followers do, as well.