No High Expectations for Albright’s Mideast Trip

As Madeleine Albright leaves today on her first trip to the Middle East as secretary of State, the Arab-Israeli peace process is at a nadir and few here expect her visit to do any good.

Israeli peace agreements with the Palestinians hang by a thread, Israel’s war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon is intensifying, and political observers see little chance for major advances between Israel and Syria.

Although Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat initiated a roundup of Islamic extremists Monday, arresting about 30 suspected members of violent groups ahead of Albright’s visit, U.S. officials said the first item on her agenda is still to press him for greater security cooperation following two multiple suicide bombings in Jerusalem that have killed 25 people, including the five bombers, since July 30.

The Palestinians have pinned renewed security cooperation on Israel’s willingness to keep commitments for further troop redeployments in the West Bank--a step Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will not take unless the Palestinians come through with a sweeping crackdown.

“It will be very hard to find a formula to get out of this crisis,” said Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University. “We’re no longer talking about the Oslo [peace] process per se or moving to final status negotiations but moving toward institutionalized conflict management.”

Underlining the difficulties, Israeli officials used the eve of Albright’s visit to press for the extradition of Palestinian Police Chief Ghazi Jabali, a close aide to Arafat whom they accuse of overseeing a group of Palestinian officers charged with shooting at Jewish settlers in the West Bank in July.

And Netanyahu spokesman David Bar-Illan dismissed the detention of suspected Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants as “Mickey Mouse arrests.” He said none of the Palestinians taken into custody was on the list of more than 200 people whose detention Israel is demanding.

“The point is whether they arrest the real big sharks,” Bar-Illan said, adding that they had not.

Israel has arrested more than 100 suspected members of the violent groups. On Monday, a Jerusalem district court banned publication of details of the investigation into the bombing Thursday at Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall.

Hamas, which claimed responsibility for both of the recent suicide bombings, denounced the arrests and vowed to keep up its campaign of violence. “We reiterate that comprehensive popular resistance, foremost being the suicide attacks, are a true expression of the feelings of the majority of the Palestinian people and sons of the Arab and Islamic nations,” it said in a statement.

Hamas said it did not look favorably upon the Albright visit “as a result of the total American bias to the policies of the Zionist enemy. We call on the American secretary not to apply pressure on Arab parties to repress resistance and submit to the dictates of the terrorist Zionists.”

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been unraveling since a previous wave of suicide bombings by Hamas and Islamic Jihad in February and March last year, which led to the defeat of the Labor Party-led government that had signed the landmark 1993 Oslo accords with Arafat and the election of Likud Party hard-liner Netanyahu in May 1996.

Four months later, armed combat broke out between the two sides after Netanyahu opened a second door to a Jewish archeological tunnel near Muslim shrines in Jerusalem’s Old City. At least 75 people died, and more than 1,000 were wounded in the clashes.

Israel redeployed its troops from most of the West Bank city of Hebron in January. But in March, the government broke ground on a 6,500-unit Jewish housing project in traditionally Arab East Jerusalem that infuriated Palestinians, who want the area as the capital of an independent Palestinian state. Arafat responded by cutting off security cooperation, and Islamic extremists bombed a Tel Aviv cafe, killing three Israelis. Peace talks were frozen. Suicide bombings followed July 30 and last week.

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Before the latest bombings, Albright reportedly had planned to use her visit to press both sides to carry out their outstanding obligations under interim peace agreements of 1995 and 1996. She intended to lean on Arafat for security cooperation and on Netanyahu to temporarily freeze construction on the East Jerusalem Har Homa project and other settlement expansion.

Now, Albright will arrive, as one well-informed political observer described it, “with a 2-by-4” for Arafat, to deliver the message that he must clamp down on the violent groups if he is to count on any more U.S. aid and support.

With criticism of Arafat and sympathy for Israel running high in the U.S. Congress, Albright cannot be seen at home to be putting pressure on Netanyahu. Several U.S. bills proposing a suspension of aid to the Palestinians are awaiting a vote in the next few weeks.

At the same time, Arab world leaders will be watching Albright for signs that the United States is willing to play the role of an evenhanded broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Palestinians are pushing for reciprocity.

“The only way to put the peace process back on track is to get Mr. Netanyahu to abide by the interim agreement on the basis of reciprocity,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said in an interview after returning from Washington.

Under the circumstances, U.S. officials have been working to dim expectations for the visit, as well as to temper the impression that Albright will lean heavily on Arafat.

“Obviously, security issues will be very high on the agenda,” said a U.S. official who asked not to be identified. “But she also will put out a message of hope. The United States is engaged, and we’re determined to work on political issues as well. Security has to be first, but she also has to provide an incentive for Arafat. He has got to know what is down the road for him.”

Sam Lewis, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, concurred that “Arafat can’t be expected to accomplish much on security unless Netanyahu gives some hope.”

But a senior State Department official said in Washington that Albright is unlikely to offer radically new proposals. “We’ve had lots of ideas for a long period of time,” he said. “The ability to act on ideas in an environment like this is profoundly limited.”

Albright is to arrive in Israel on Wednesday morning and meet with Israeli officials. She will travel to Jericho on Thursday to meet with Arafat and leave Friday for Syria. She is also scheduled to visit Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

U.S. officials feel that they have been getting “positive atmospherics” from Syria’s President Hafez Assad and are hopeful that Albright’s stop there could lead to renewed peace negotiations with Israel. But U.S. and Israeli political observers say the most they should hope for is to reopen channels of communication.

Neither side appears ready to negotiate a withdrawal by Israel from the territory it has occupied in southern Lebanon since 1985. Despite recent heavy losses there, Israel is resisting internal calls for a unilateral pullout. Political observers say that Syria, which dominates affairs in Lebanon and maintains 35,000 troops there, will not cut a deal there before Israel agrees to give all of the captured Golan Heights back to Syria.

Times staff writers Rebecca Trounson in Jerusalem and Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.