Israelis, Palestinians Can’t See Light at End of Tunnel

Israelis and Palestinians are watching with alarm as the dizzying pace of rage, bloodshed and revenge consumes both peoples. Despite furtive contacts between officials of the two sides, the ability to find common ground--common language, even--has become paralyzed in hateful recrimination.

Within the month-old Israeli government, a qualitative shift has taken place in how Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat is officially regarded and treated.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sees Arafat as little more than a terrorist and is not shy about saying so. Armed with enormous public support, the right-wing Israeli leader has retaliated against Palestinian attacks on his citizens with less of the vacillation that undermined the leadership of his predecessor, Ehud Barak, who seesawed between treating Arafat as an enemy and a partner.

And so, the killings last week of a 10-month-old and two teenage Israelis were answered quickly with a punishing barrage of missiles on Arafat’s elite security forces. More attacks by Palestinians this week were countered within two hours.

Arafat, who perhaps only realized belatedly how difficult Sharon could make things for him, has done nothing discernible to alleviate tensions or rein in gunmen. Nor does he seem to believe that it is his duty to do so. He and his associates regard Sharon as a bellicose warmonger. The new Israeli government’s hard-line stance and the apparent indifference of the dispute’s onetime mediator, the United States, have left the Palestinian leadership in desperate disarray.

Sharon’s steely-eyed attitude is the product of his history and self-image as a fighter of Arabs. Dismissing Arafat gives Sharon a freer hand to act. But in a battle of limited options, this old-new attitude has not yet offered better or more effective solutions. His retaliations may have been swift, but they have not stopped the escalation of attacks nor restored a sense of safety to his public.

Universally, the conclusion among Israelis and Palestinians is that the conflict will worsen. Even the voices of greatest despair concur that the only long-term solution will be a return to some form of negotiations, though the path for getting there is not now evident.

Yossi Sarid, head of Israel’s left-wing opposition and until now a true dove where the Palestinians were concerned, captures the national pessimism:

“We, stricken with grief and rage, will go on striking at the Palestinians in utter opacity to their suffering, and they, stricken with grief and rage, will go on striking at us in utter opacity to our suffering, until we’re all exhausted,” Sarid told Israeli radio Wednesday. “And then, exhausted from every side, we’ll go back to the negotiating table, and Bertolt Brecht, had he lived, would have written a new play on the folly and sterility of this war.”

Against this bleak backdrop, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, architect of the peace process that has so spectacularly collapsed, met Wednesday in Greece with senior Palestinian envoys. It was the highest-level contact since Sharon’s landslide election Feb. 6, but its full significance is not yet clear.

Peres, looking for the best possible interpretation, said the session was the first sign that the Palestinians were ready to “stop shooting and start talking.” But, he added, “the emotional distance between the sides today is much vaster than even the territorial distance.”

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, said of the meeting: “We have different points of view in the ways we see things on the ground.”

At the urging of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the Israelis and Palestinians held a separate security meeting late Wednesday, reportedly with a CIA representative. The Israelis insisted that the discussion be limited to ways to stop the violence, given Sharon’s repeated statements that he will not negotiate substantive peace issues “under fire.” The Palestinians insisted on discussing a full agenda that included political as well as security issues.

After the meeting, the convoy returning the top three Palestinian security officials to their Gaza headquarters came under Israeli army fire, Israel Radio reported. Two bodyguards were wounded, and the Palestinians accused Israel of attempting to assassinate them. The army said its soldiers thought they heard shooting coming from the convoy.

Arafat earlier Wednesday told a visiting delegation of leftist Israeli lawmakers that he wanted security cooperation to resume only in tandem with peace negotiations. The Palestinians fear that if they ease up on their 6-month-old revolt, they will lose bargaining leverage.

“My impression is that he is worried,” Israeli legislator Naomi Chazan said after visiting the Palestinian leader in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Sharon’s advisors insist that he has not yet written off Arafat or decided that a Palestinian relationship without Arafat would be better. Many analysts warn that the chaos that would follow in the absence of the Palestinian leader, when rival security forces could be expected to wage an internecine fight for control, would only complicate Israel’s position.

At the least, however, Sharon hopes that the Arafat who is eventually driven back to the negotiating table is a bruised and battered one with lower expectations. The difficulty in that strategy comes in calibrating the amount of pressure needed to force Arafat to make concessions without destroying the weakened Palestinian Authority he leads.

Ongoing Israeli pressure--including raids into Palestinian-controlled territory, the assassination of militia leaders and an economic and physical blockade--can have unintended consequences of further inflaming the Palestinians’ anger or uniting them behind their beleaguered leaders.

“Israel faces an extremely difficult situation with Yasser Arafat,” said Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the United Nations who serves as an advisor to Sharon. “Rather than wash our hands of political dialogue with the Palestinians, what the government of Israel is trying to do is to move Arafat away from . . . conflict to [a] peace process.”

Among other hints of renewed contact, Sharon reportedly sent his son Omri on a “secret” mission to deliver a message to Arafat this week. The very idea of talking to the Palestinian leader as the fighting continued enraged the prime minister’s right-wing governing partners.

Months of unrest have claimed more than 450 lives--most of them Palestinian--but the conflict has still not reached the level of all-out war. Nor do neighboring Arab countries appear inclined to get involved.

But Zeev Schiff, the respected military affairs writer for the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, argued Wednesday that as Palestinians and Israelis expand their choice of targets and scope of attacks, a state of “limited war” looms.

Even a return to negotiations will lead, at least initially, only to discussion of so-called interim issues--minor hand-overs of land, for example--not a comprehensive settlement, according to Sharon’s government. Palestinians, who rejected a wide-ranging offer from Barak at last summer’s failed Camp David summit, say interim agreements are not satisfactory.

Mohammed Dahlan, a Palestinian security chief, warned that a failure to resume negotiations will further stoke the terror that Israel so desperately wants to end.

“As far as the Palestinian people are concerned, death and life are the same at this point,” Dahlan said. “This is a very, very dangerous stage that any people can be at, and we have nothing to lose.”