Peace in the Mideast Doesn’t Appear in the Cards

Now that the Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to a high-stakes Washington summit next month, the question arises: What chance is there that the talks will restore significant momentum and vitality to a peace process that has been paralyzed for nearly 19 months?

The answer appears to be: not much.

Given President Clinton’s weakened status, the profound distrust between Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu, and the many thorny issues confronting them, observers were skeptical Tuesday that any real progress is on the horizon.

“There’s nothing that’s happened in the last year--or the last couple days--that indicates anything like that is going to happen,” said Gerald Steinberg, a political studies professor at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. “The odds are going to be very, very low.”

Nonetheless, the mid-October summit proposed by Clinton could, at long last, produce a deal for Israel to withdraw its troops from another chunk of the occupied West Bank in exchange for tougher Palestinian actions to fight terrorism. And that alone is nothing to scoff at.

“Any agreement that comes out at this point will be a shadow of what it could or should have been if it was signed a year ago,” Hebrew University political scientist Yaron Ezrahi said. “But such an agreement is far better than none.”

Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Arafat, the Palestinian Authority president, already have accepted part of a U.S. initiative for the withdrawal. After months of U.S.-brokered negotiations, they now agree that Israel will cede an additional 13% of the West Bank to the Palestinians in the redeployment, although 3% will be designated a “nature reserve” with special restrictions.

But the partial agreement was not announced at a joint news conference Monday at the White House, evidently because neither man trusts that the other will actually follow through. Instead, the pair stood, unsmiling, on either side of Clinton and did not acknowledge each other or shake hands during their brief appearance.

On Tuesday, Arafat emerged from a separate meeting with Clinton to confirm that the Palestinians accept the idea of the nature reserve as long as it is designated part of an existing category of West Bank land that Israelis and Palestinians call “Area B,” in which Palestinians have control over civil matters and Israelis have responsibility for security.

After months of impasse, both Arafat and Netanyahu have reasons to try to strike a deal now, if only to earn the gratitude of the troubled U.S. leader at a critical juncture in his presidency. A Mideast accord would give Clinton a high-profile foreign policy success amid his domestic political troubles.

“They’ve got the opportunity to endear themselves to the president of the United States forever and ever by going for this,” a U.S. official said Tuesday. “There’s got to be some interest in that.”

And each leader has another reason to try to move forward. For Arafat, it’s the opportunity to add more land, albeit less than he had hoped, to the parameters of the Palestinian state he plans to declare in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as early as May. For Netanyahu, it’s the chance to get from the Palestinians a more detailed, concrete plan for fighting anti-Israeli extremists, allowing him to tell Israelis that he has kept a campaign promise to achieve “peace with security.”

For months, Netanyahu has insisted that the Palestinians take more concerted action against Islamic militant groups that have launched numerous deadly attacks against Israel from areas under Palestinian control.

His concerns were underscored Tuesday when an explosion in a car near the West Bank city of Ramallah left one man dead and two others wounded. Palestinian police said the three were members of the militant Islamic group Hamas and may have been transporting a bomb intended for an attack in Israel during Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which began at sundown Tuesday.

But the two leaders must also weigh the domestic political risks they would face in allowing progress in peace negotiations vehemently opposed by extremists and others on both sides.

Netanyahu faces strong opposition from Jewish settlers and some members of his own coalition, who have threatened to bolt if he signs a West Bank agreement. On Tuesday, lawmaker Hanan Porat, a member of the National Religious Party and chairman of a key parliamentary committee, said he will speed passage of a bill to dissolve the government and force early elections if Netanyahu agrees to the pullout.

Arafat, for his part, must contend with opposition from extremist Islamic groups, including Hamas, as well as from a Palestinian public that is increasingly disillusioned with the 5-year-old peace process; many Palestinians argue that it has not significantly improved their lives.

“People don’t see a lot of change,” said Palestinian political science professor Ali Jirbawi of Birzeit University in the West Bank. “There are still Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints. The occupation is still here.”

He and others predicted that despite the difficulties, U.S. officials will succeed in brokering some kind of withdrawal agreement. Clinton has announced that he is sending Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and mediator Dennis B. Ross to the region next week to lay the groundwork.

Less likely is that the West Bank accord, if it occurs, will build enough confidence and momentum to propel the two sides into substantive talks on a final settlement, which was envisioned as the last, most difficult stage of the process launched in Oslo in 1993. Those negotiations were intended to cover the most sensitive issues between the sides, including the question of refugees and the future of Jerusalem.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.