Attack the Sticking Point

Those who argue that the past week’s deadly clashes between Israelis and Palestinians prove the futility of pursuing peace have it backward. The violence that began on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount last Thursday and quickly spread across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and into Israeli Arab communities portends what lies ahead if national leaders fail in their historic responsibility to conclude a peace agreement. The aim of the negotiations that have come so near to success and yet remain so far from closure is to fix the rules for coexistence between two peoples fated by geography to live side by side. The geography is immutable. It’s the political attitudes of Israelis and Palestinians that must change.

The immediate need is for an end to the violence and adoption of firm measures to keep it from erupting again, including curbs on such acts as right-wing Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon’s deliberately provocative visit to two of Islam’s holiest shrines.

Israel blames Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for failing to use his authority to control rampaging mobs or to restrain his own police forces, which sometimes joined in attacks on Israelis. Palestinians blame Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for ordering or condoning an excessive use of force in confrontations with demonstrators. There is truth to both claims, though there is also a need to back away from mutual recrimination. Barak’s agreement in Paris talks Wednesday with Arafat and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to pull back Israeli forces is a welcome step toward defusing the crisis.

The United States is laboring to restart the peace talks, which have been stalemated since July. Then as now, the great sticking point is how sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the safekeeping of its key religious sites--the Western Wall for the Jews, the two great mosques above it for the Muslims--is to be determined.

Until a few months ago most Israelis would have found inconceivable the notion of sharing control over East Jerusalem. Barak, to his credit, has prepared public opinion for that possibility. Arafat has not done the same with the Palestinians. Yet it seems unarguable that if peace is finally to be achieved, some kind of political compromise on East Jerusalem must be reached.

Washington rightly worries that little time is left to restart the talks in an atmosphere that would provide the incentive to keep them moving ahead. Within a matter of months Israel will probably face new elections. The results could bring back to power those who in the past paid lip service to the peace process even as they did all in their power to undermine it. The Palestinian leadership should be as concerned about that prospect as the United States and the peace forces in Israel are.