New Challenges in Mideast

Three years of inertia and bitter mutual accusations of bad faith in the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking process are at an end. On Sunday an agreement was signed to implement last year’s U.S.-brokered Wye River accord and proceed to the long-anticipated--and by some long-dreaded--final phase of negotiations.

The agreement, signed at Sharm el Sheik in Egypt, represents a significant though far from decisive step forward, for ahead lies the monumental challenge of trying to resolve the most intractable issues facing the parties. Among them: determining the boundaries and nature of the Palestinian state that is now taking shape; the claims of millions of refugee Palestinians to ancestral property in Israel or the West Bank; whether part of Jerusalem will become the capital of a Palestinian state; the future of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, and, not least, how the chronically insufficient water resources are to be fairly apportioned between two peoples.

It’s more a measure of moral commitment than of political realism that Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat fixed a deadline only one year off for arriving at a final settlement. Under the original 1993 Oslo agreement, the starting point for the peace process, the final phase of negotiations was supposed to have begun more than three years ago and concluded by now. With Barak’s election last May, a new dynamic in bilateral talks became possible. What hasn’t changed is the formidable nature of the problems on the table. Barak is no less determined than his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, that Israel’s fundamental security needs be provided for in any final deal. And Arafat certainly is no less committed than before to an agreement that the majority of Palestinians can accept and support as just.

Internal opposition to what Barak and Arafat are trying to accomplish remains strong. The car bombs that exploded Sunday in northern Israel were an immediate reminder that terror continues to be the instrument of choice for Palestinian enemies of the peace process. Barak, meanwhile, can expect that Israeli opponents of the peace process, led by right-wing settler groups, will be unstinting in their protests and agitation as well.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was on hand to nudge the new agreement along and give it American blessing. As negotiations enter their most difficult phase, it seems a good bet that requests for her services can only increase.