Reaching Agreement Is Just the First Step

Israelis and Palestinians made a point of trudging toward their Camp David summit with all the enthusiasm of someone going in for a root canal. So before the media blackout descended, the pre-summit commentary was strikingly gloomy--especially after Ehud Barak’s coalition government collapsed. The punditocracy seems to have decided that the chances of a deal are no better than 50-50.

Don’t believe the hype. In fact, a historic deal is by far the most likely outcome. Much of the pessimism has been seriously overdone by negotiators seeking to drive up their opening bids and by commentators unfamiliar with the peace process’ wonky rhythms. Nor, strange to say, does Barak’s political face-plant back home make much difference at Camp David. Nor do President Clinton’s Nobel Prize ambitions much matter; the key is that a major deal is the best self-interested result for both Barak and Yasser Arafat.

Of course, no major Middle East pact is reached without crises, stalls and screaming brinkmanship. This one will, too--including, perhaps, a lull if Clinton goes to Japan for this week’s G8 meeting--but such maneuvering is the wrong thing to get hysterical about. Instead, the alarm should be reserved for the tougher part: selling a deal after the summit.

This is not to say that making a deal will be easy, only to say that both sides have powerful incentives to reach one. If Arafat, who is not getting any younger, walks away from the Maryland mountains empty-handed, he will have to either make good on his oft-threatened vow to unilaterally declare Palestinian statehood or go through the humiliation of breaking that promise and slouching back to the negotiating table. Doing the former gives him a bloodied, besieged Palestine in about 40% of the West Bank; doing the latter embarrasses him, emboldens his Islamist foes, costs him the use of the friendly President Clinton, and leaves him to negotiate with post-Barak Israeli governments that will almost certainly be less generous. Camp David II, by contrast, would give him a universally recognized state in 80% to 90% of the West Bank, international hosannas to welcome it, and plenty of euros and yen to build it. Arafat will have to gulp hard, but the sensible thing for the Palestinians to do is seize the opportunity to seize an opportunity.

For his part, Barak has no way back. His right-leaning coalition partners--whose constituents are the settlers, the largely hard-line Russian immigrants and religious blue-collar Sephardim--were never going to be able to survive such a moment of decision, so their departure should have come as no great shock. Nor need it matter that much to the negotiations. Any Camp David deal will have to pass an Israeli referendum, and once Barak is putting his political future on the line, he may well hold elections at the same time. So his least-bad alternative is to throw a Hail Mary, cut a deal now and then dare the Israeli right to vote it down. And his wilted coalition might, perversely, give a mild boost to his short-term negotiating position since it irrefutably demonstrates his woes back home and the need to get a sellable deal.

That deal also need not wrap up the process begun in Oslo in 1993. The statements of U.S. peace envoy Dennis Ross make it plain that the parties are after something less ambitious but nevertheless historic: a framework accord on permanent status that touches on all the conflict’s most elemental issues but does not necessarily resolve them. The very elasticity of a framework accord makes it much more likely that the summiteers will be able to wrap diplomatic jargon over their differences. After Camp David II may come Camp David III or IV. The new pact will have to point in the direction of a comprehensive settlement, but issues such as Jerusalem’s ultimate disposition or the finer points of refugee compensation can be kicked as far down the road as necessary.

Still, the outlines of Camp David II, as batted about in the Israeli and Palestinian media, make it clear that both sides have excruciating sales jobs ahead. Neither constituency is ready for the agonizing trade-offs that may be in the works--things rumored to include keeping Jerusalem Israeli but flying a Palestinian flag on the Temple Mount and giving Arafat some municipal say in running East Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods; speaking empathetically of the Palestinian “right of return” while leaving most of the 1948 Palestinian refugees outside Palestine; handing the strategic Jordan River valley over to Palestinian sovereignty but keeping Israeli troops stationed there; dismantling no settlements but leaving dozens of them to dry up slowly within Palestine, and so on--including, perhaps most painfully of all--shelving both sides’ claims to feel permanently abused by the other.

In effect, the hard part is not Clinton’s problem; it is Barak’s and Arafat’s. And here, a bit of genuine alarm is perhaps in order. Some Arafat deputies have spoken of a Palestinian referendum on the deal, but that is not the problem. The scars of a deal are another matter. And Israel’s electorate, which kicked out its doves in 1996, can be neither bypassed nor predicted, but it probably lacks the chutzpah to spurn so high-profile a deal. But the Likud will howl that Barak has vivisected Jerusalem, essentially surrendered to the 1967 borders and generally been a strategic chump. Both sides’ rejectionists may now roar back to life. The collapse of Israel’s centrist coalition has thrown the country back to the agonizing central divide that preceded Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, and some ultranationalists will be looking to gun down more than just a diplomatic deal. Palestinian refugee groups in southern Lebanon, frozen out at Camp David II, could try to shell the Galilee, and intelligence reports make it clear that the passage of a few years with no Hamas bombings was not for lack of trying. Even one major attack could swing Israeli public opinion wildly.

The chances of making a deal stick go up significantly if the talks are accompanied by a minimum of grumbling. Congressional leaders also could help by backing Clinton’s efforts with both applause and aid assurances. No one except Clinton and a doubtless exhausted Ross will leave Camp David beaming.

The bottom line remains the Israeli-Palestinian quest for a mutually tolerable level of dissatisfaction--and the attempt to sell it to two agonizingly split polities.