Getting Real in the Mideast

The new blueprint for peace presented by President Clinton to Israeli and Palestinian leaders is notable--and laudable--for its unblinking realism. It recognizes that Palestinians, supported by the larger Muslim world, are adamant about winning sovereignty over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the location of two of Islam’s most important shrines as well as being Judaism’s most sacred site. And it recognizes that Israelis of all political persuasions are determined never to readmit the 3.5 million Palestinians and their descendants who fled before and during Israel’s 1948 war of independence. Neither side feels it can yield on these core issues. Clinton was nonetheless right to offer his proposals, if only to force the parties to reexamine ideas each has always insisted were not only nonnegotiable but unthinkable.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, desperate for an agreement that might salvage his sinking political career, says he’s ready to accept the Clinton plan as a basis for further discussions if Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will. Arafat, as usual, is equivocating, but his top aides have sent strongly negative signals. One, in a remarkable example of delusional argument, suggests that rejecting the Clinton plan would benefit the Palestinians by helping to ensure Barak’s defeat in the Feb. 6 election for prime minister. How? By bringing to power the right-wing Likud Party’s Ariel Sharon, presumably assuring a harsher crackdown on Palestinian militancy. That in turn would encourage greater world sympathy for the Palestinian cause, forcing Sharon to make concessions even more far-reaching than those Barak has offered.

This dreamy scenario ignores everything experience has taught about the behavior of Likud governments, including their scorn for any opinions that clash with their own. It also exemplifies the familiar folly of Palestinian leaders in believing they can achieve their aims by getting others to put pressure on Israel, instead of doing the essential hard work of negotiating and compromising on their own.

As always, compromise remains the key. It is what has brought the two sides, in Clinton’s assessment, closer than they have ever been to achieving a peace agreement. It is more essential than ever now that the central issues of the conflict--Jerusalem, the Israeli settlements, the Palestinian refugees--can no longer be evaded.

For decades Israelis have argued vigorously among themselves about what could be given up in exchange for peace with the Palestinians. A strong consensus for significant concessions emerged, only to be shattered by the eruption of Palestinian violence three months ago. But the Palestinians have not been encouraged to engage in free discussion about what they could give up in exchange for independence and peace. As a result, Palestinian public opinion has been left unprepared for a settlement based on anything less than long-asserted maximum demands. Arafat, who has told Clinton he fears assassination if he is seen as too ready to compromise, is apparently comfortable with that. Combined with the apparently impending change of government in Israel, that is a prescription for the status quo to continue.