Mideast Talks Hanging by a Thread

It took only a few days, but an attempt by Israelis and Palestinians to talk directly about how to break the 16-month impasse over a further Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank was declared all but dead Wednesday.

Last-minute involvement by Jordan’s Crown Prince Hassan late Wednesday may have salvaged the contact temporarily. But each side projected extreme pessimism that the parties, if left to negotiate alone, would reach any understandings. Asked if the talks were a failure, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat replied: “Approximately.”

“The bilateral negotiations have ended without any progress, and the Israelis did not bring anything new at all,” said Arafat spokesman Nabil abu Rudaineh.

The Israelis, insisting that the differences were narrow, appealed to the United States to step back into the breach. “What is required now is that a senior representative arrive from the United States, either the envoy Dennis Ross or even at a higher level, and close the gaps and reach an agreement that could move the political process forward,” Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai said.

Hassan spoke with Mordechai and Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s second-in-command, late Wednesday. As a result, Israeli media reported, Palestinian negotiators agreed to one more round of discussions, probably today.

But there was no Palestinian confirmation of this, and Abbas was quoted by Reuters news agency as denying any more meetings were planned.

If the talks have reached their conclusion, it raises bleak questions about what comes next for Israel and the rest of the Middle East: Has the peace process finally reached an end, and if so, how will the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab neighbors respond if talks cease?

An increasingly likely scenario is for early Israeli elections because opposition parties in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, as well as some members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own coalition have said they will bring down his Likud-led government if it doesn’t go ahead with the U.S.-proposed pullback. And hard-liners in Netanyahu’s coalition have insisted that they will seek to topple the government if it agrees to any significant withdrawal.

Opposition parties plan to try next week to dissolve parliament and call elections. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported Wednesday that Netanyahu is now speaking in private about early elections and is leaning toward having them in January.

Polls conducted in late June and early July and published in the Maariv and Yediot Aharonot newspapers show Netanyahu in a fierce race against Labor Party leader Ehud Barak; one survey gives the incumbent a lead of 5 percentage points; the other puts Barak ahead by 3 points.

The stumbling block in negotiations since early 1997 has been the scope of a second, scheduled Israeli pullback from West Bank lands Israel has occupied since the 1967 Six-Day War. The Palestinians have accepted a U.S. compromise that would have Israel cede full or partial control over an additional 13% of West Bank land in exchange for strict guarantees by the Palestinians to fight terrorism.

But Netanyahu’s government is sticking to a maximum 10% withdrawal, arguing that to hand over more land would jeopardize Israeli security. Its latest proposal--that an additional 3% of the land could be turned into a protected preserve, which neither side could populate--has apparently been rejected by the Palestinians.

Washington responded coolly Wednesday to Mordechai’s plea for renewed American intervention, with U.S. officials urging the Israelis and Palestinians to try harder to make their talks work.

“We have told the parties for quite some time now that it was going to be hard work for them to bridge the differences that exist, and we have worked hard to help them bridge these differences,” said White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry. “But they should stay engaged, and they should continue to work.”

He said that Ross, the special U.S. envoy to the region, remains “available to the parties for consultation” but indicated that the diplomat would not return to the Mideast until the sides have made progress on their own.

This round of discussions began Sunday night at the United States’ behest with a meeting between Mordechai and Abbas. Further talks occurred Monday and Tuesday between lower-level officials--Saeb Erekat, the local government minister for the Palestinians, and Israeli Cabinet Secretary Danny Naveh.

There was no meeting Wednesday after the Palestinians indicated that the exercise would be futile.

Members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet accused Arafat of posturing when he said the negotiations had failed. They portrayed it as a tactic to try to win more concessions from Israel. “It is not the first time that, as we approach the end of negotiations, the Palestinians have played it as if the whole thing is dead in the water,” Netanyahu spokesman David Bar-Illan said.

But Yossi Beilin, a Labor Party lawmaker and one of the architects of the Oslo peace agreement reached under the previous, Labor governments, said the talks were failing because of Netanyahu’s policies.

He expressed fear that a breakdown in negotiations could end tragically. “The tension is mounting,” he warned, “but we can still stop it here and now.”