A Chance for Mideast Progress

American officials are taking care to downplay expectations about the U.S.-Israel-Palestinian meetings scheduled to open today at a site in Maryland. Their caution seems warranted. For one thing, Israel’s new foreign minister, Ariel Sharon, who will be in charge of negotiations with the Palestinians, has long argued against further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank, and a turnover of territory is what these talks are primarily supposed to be about. For another, the murder of an Israeli this week, presumably by Palestinian gunmen, led Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to all but write off any chances for a deal on this trip. By Wednesday, Netanyahu was sounding a bit more upbeat, but the fragility of the negotiating process had again been underscored.

Yet, for all the uncertainties and the bleak record of 19 months of stalemate and even regression in Israel-Palestinian relations leading up to today’s meeting, progress still seems possible. Unless a deal is finalized for Israel to withdraw from a further 13% of the West Bank, in exchange for Palestinian pledges to get tougher with anti-Israel militants, the peace process will have reached a dead end, a failure that would please only the extremists on both sides.

Earlier high-level Israel-Palestinian meetings brokered by the U.S. have produced only agreements to hold more meetings. Meanwhile, attitudes on both sides have hardened, threatening to further restrict the maneuvering room that Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat must have if the peace process is to advance. Netanyahu, with the hawkish but perhaps now more flexible Sharon as cover, may finally be ready to face down the extremists in his Cabinet. A solid majority of Israelis still favors making concessions for peace.