Quest for Mideast Peace Picking Up Steam

Israelis, Palestinians and Americans are picking up the pieces of the failed Camp David summit and attempting to glue them back together into a historic peace agreement--one that participants hope will emerge in the coming weeks.

With a mid-September target date looming, diplomats and negotiators on Wednesday stepped up their efforts to revive talks. Top Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in the first senior-level contact between the two sides since the summit collapsed July 25.

This came amid the strongest indications yet that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, stung by tepid receptions in the Arab world, will postpone plans to declare an independent state. A delay in that announcement, which had been expected Sept. 13, would greatly alleviate tensions with Israel but risk angering the Palestinian public. If Arafat could point to the likelihood of another summit, he could make a postponement more palatable.

For a new summit to be scheduled, however, the parties will have to find a way to reconcile the differences that doomed last month’s Camp David effort, most notably the dispute over control of Jerusalem. U.S. officials have made it clear that President Clinton will not host a new session unless he becomes convinced that Israel and the Palestinians are prepared to reach agreement.

“There is not going to be a third and a fourth summit,” a U.S. official said. “There has to be a sense that something has changed . . . particularly on the Palestinian side” for Clinton to convene the parties again.

U.S. officials put the onus on Arafat, saying he must show the same measure of “flexibility” that they believe Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered--an assessment that infuriates the Palestinians.

The Camp David negotiations fell apart largely over the fate of Jerusalem. Barak offered Arafat limited control over some areas of East Jerusalem and over the Muslim holy sites within the Old City. But Arafat wants complete sovereignty in these areas, occupied and annexed by Israel during the 1967 Middle East War.

Dennis B. Ross, Washington’s special envoy for the Middle East, was scheduled to arrive in Israel today, reportedly armed with new proposals, to gauge whether the two sides have made enough progress to warrant another summit.

The push toward another summit comes as Arafat circles the planet in search of support, a quest that has met with a lukewarm response. Ever an indefatigable globe-trotter, Arafat has traveled to 23 countries in the past 19 days, with a couple of stops at his Gaza Strip and West Bank home bases.

Especially among Arab states, however, Arafat has failed to secure backing for a unilateral declaration of an independent Palestine. Whether because of U.S. pressure or historical animus toward Arafat, most of the Arab leaders urged him to forge an agreement with Israel before launching statehood, according to Palestinian and other Arab officials.

And reports in the Arab-language press, coupled with suggestions from U.S. diplomats, indicate that Arab leaders are urging Arafat to find a compromise.

“I believe there is room for reaching agreement,” said Mohammed Bassiouni, the Egyptian ambassador to Israel, who has known Arafat for 32 years and participates in negotiations. “Everyone is thinking with his heart and not with his mind. I do believe that if we think with our minds, [an agreement] may be possible.”

Publicly, no Arab or Muslim leader will back off from the insistence that Israel not be given sovereignty over East Jerusalem, especially the holy site known as Temple Mount to Jews and Haram al Sharif, or “noble sanctuary,” to Muslims. But privately, there are discussions on ways to define sovereignty. One suggestion is to give both sides “joint control,” which means that no one party would have greater authority than the other.

Jews believe that the Temple Mount is the location of the biblical First and Second Temples and thus the holiest site in Judaism. It is also the location of Al Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock--the third holiest site to Islam--where the prophet Muhammad is believed to have begun his ascent to heaven.

In his jaunt through Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Arafat heard near-unanimous urgings to put off declaring a state unilaterally and thus avoid triggering a violent response from Israel and a permanent breakdown in peace talks.

In Indonesia on Wednesday, Arafat said a final decision will be made by the Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization early next month. “We had decided before, but we have to reassess this,” Arafat said. The dates of Nov. 15 and Jan. 1 have been floated as alternatives.

Arafat also said that Clinton wrote him promising to focus on the Middle East peace process after this week’s Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles winds up, Associated Press reported from Jakarta, Indonesia.

In his wanderings, Arafat has also failed to generate support for an Arab summit, which he has sought since the Camp David talks. Palestinians have grumbled that, as Arafat visited capital after capital in these past weeks, he encountered a U.S. envoy--usually Assistant Secretary of State Edward Walker--either preceding or following him every step of the way.

Sept. 13, in addition to being the day Arafat had said he would declare a state, is also the target date for concluding the negotiations for a permanent, definitive peace agreement. Arafat and Barak set the date last September when they signed the first treaty between the two leaders.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, acting foreign minister for Israel, met Wednesday for five hours with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and senior security official Col. Mohammed Dahlan. All were key participants at the Camp David talks. Although various informal contacts have been maintained since Camp David ended inconclusively, Wednesday’s session marked the formal resumption of talks, Ben-Ami said.

“We should not raise expectations sky-high because the issues are very difficult,” Ben-Ami said.