Dimming the Prospects for Peace

The 14-month-long stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations continues, despite this week’s vigorous efforts by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her top Middle East experts to foster a breakthrough. The Clinton administration says it is ready to try one more time and has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to Washington on Monday so that President Clinton can take a direct hand in trying to end the impasse. But the invitation is conditional.

The United States wants prior agreement from Israel that it will turn over to the Palestinians a further 13% of the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority, over a 12-week period, would be required simultaneously to intensify its efforts to combat terrorism. Arafat says he’ll accept this plan. Netanyahu says he won’t be “dictated” to. In an obvious effort to stall matters through next Monday, he insists that Dennis Ross, the U.S. peace envoy, return to Israel for more conversation.

It’s hard to see the talks being resuscitated at the 11th hour. It appears instead that the long-feared collapse in the peace effort may now be imminent, with consequences that many dread. Netanyahu insists that an Israeli pullback from another 13% of the West Bank, instead of the 11% he has privately hinted might be acceptable, would create an intolerable threat to security. But if Israel balks at yielding a mere 2% more land to keep peace talks alive, there can hardly be hope that it would ever agree to a larger pullback on which a final peace treaty almost certainly depends. The withdrawal Netanyahu has whispered about would, added to earlier pullbacks, leave only 38% of the West Bank in Palestinian hands. Accepting such a disproportionate partition would doom any Palestinian regime.

If Israel’s Cabinet rejects the U.S. plan when it meets on Sunday it will be assuring its own survival, since some in the coalition have promised to bolt the government if even one inch more of land is ceded to the Palestinians. The cost in its relations with the Clinton administration remains to be measured. While most of Congress remains uncritically in Israel’s camp, the administration has made evident its disappointment and frustration with Netanyahu’s inflexibility. Israel’s hard right and its least-questioning supporters in the United States insist that the only issue is Israel’s security, as defined by the most implacable opponents of withdrawal. But lasting security will come only when there is real peace, a goal that remains tragically elusive.