Tough Choice for Barak

Last weekend’s Arab summit in Cairo predictably excoriated Israel for the violence that has swept across the West Bank and Gaza Strip in recent weeks and hailed the Palestinians for what it deemed their efforts to liberate themselves from Israeli occupation. But the conference turned aside radical demands that Arab states sever all ties with Israel and prepare for war. Major credit for that choice goes to Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who are wise enough to know what fresh disasters await their region if belligerency again prevails.

The Cairo meeting was convened to mollify protesters who have taken to the streets across much of the Middle East in support of the Palestinian cause. Few Arab states--Libya and Iraq being exceptions--are ready to pronounce the peace process dead. But passions continue to run high. Arab leaders worry that the calls they are hearing for action against Israel might suddenly be redirected against them.

Israel’s embattled Prime Minister Ehud Barak has responded by announcing a “timeout” in the negotiating process, a decision strongly opposed by a Cabinet already shrunken by defections. Barak also wants to accelerate a study of how Israelis and Palestinians might be physically separated, a hugely complicated task given the economic interconnections that now exist.

At the same time Barak has stepped up his courtship of the right-wing Likud Party, which he hopes to bring into a national emergency government. Creating such an unnatural coalition could spare Barak, who now controls only 30 votes in the 120-member Knesset, from defeat on a no-confidence vote early next month. But by sharing power with Likud’s hawkish and devious leader, Ariel Sharon, whose price for entering the government would be the withdrawal of virtually all the concessions that Barak has made to the Palestinians, the prime minister would be declaring not just a pause in peace efforts but an indefinite suspension.

A poll last week found that more than 60% of Israelis continue to support the peace process, despite all that has happened since Sharon took his provocative stroll around Jerusalem’s main Muslim holy sites on Sept. 28. Barak ought to appeal to that base and take his chances in a new election rather than shackle himself to Sharon and accept the responsibility for what could follow. It’s true that Barak has lost much of the popularity that won him a landslide victory last year. It’s also true that his is still the most reasoned and feasible approach to peace.

There’s no hope of reviving that approach until the daily confrontations and bloodshed stop. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat can’t control every extremist among his people. But he can command his security forces to impose order in the streets, a first step that would allow Barak to pull back his troops without appearing to have surrendered to rock throwers and gunmen. That is the minimum needed to resuscitate what at best promises to be a long process to rebuild a foundation for peace negotiations and to turn the Middle East away from the grim threat of more war.