A U.S. Role Is Crucial For Peace By Chas. W. Freeman Jr.

A U.S. Role Is Crucial For Peace
By Chas. W. Freeman Jr.


No American politician ever lost an election by speaking too fondly of Israel or too poorly of the Palestinians. But this is a time for sober calculation about events in the Holy Land and their implications for American interests, not for emotionally or electorally satisfying rhetoric.

The credibility of the United States as mediator between Israelis and Arabs is at an all-time low, the cease-fire agreement reached yesterday between the Israelis and Palestinians notwithstanding.

Israelis had hoped the Oslo accords would persuade Arabs to accept their presence on the West Bank and even to thank Israelis for giving back some land taken in 1967, not to mention give Israelis a greatly enhanced sense of security. They expected acquiescence in their continued control of Jerusalem. What they got was continued animosity from Palestinians, pressure for additional concessions, a near doubling of the rate at which Israeli Arabs murdered Israeli Jews, and a rising challenge to their sovereignty in Jerusalem. They now face a resurgent intifada.

Palestinians had expected that Oslo would lead to the end of Israeli land seizures, paramilitary colonization and martial law. They hoped for the rapid return of land seized by Israel, emergence of self-government in their own state and recognition of their right to establish their capital in Jerusalem.

What they experienced was expanded Jewish settlements, repeated delays in deadlines for Israeli withdrawal and the consolidation of Israeli-controlled corridors on the West Bank. They saw the emergence of a territorial jigsaw puzzle rather than a state, and Israel's stance on Jerusalem was far short of their political requirements. Fewer Palestinians were dying at the hands of Israeli soldiers, but settlers were killing twice as many as before.

The ill-timed and ill-prepared summit at Camp David in July clarified these gaps between expectation and reality, but did not narrow them. Israelis and most Americans acclaimed broad concessions by Ehud Barak as bold departures from Israel's previous stands on the core issues.

But Palestinians, other Arabs and most Muslims saw Israeli final offers that would produce a Palestinian Bantustan, relegate Arabs to a permanent position of inferiority in the Holy Land and force Muslims to bow to Jewish control of the Islamic holy places in Jerusalem -- what Ariel Sharon's heavily armed visit to the Haram al Sharif sought to emphasize.

Camp David thus set the stage for confrontation, not peace. Its aftermath may have ended Mr. Barak's power to negotiate. He can thump and temporize; he can no longer compromise. Few expect him to be in office long. Likewise, the Palestinian people have curtailed Yasir Arafat's mandate to make peace with Israel. He has no authority to accept anything like what Mr. Barak offered him at Camp David even if that were still on the table.

At the summit meeting in Egypt, President Clinton struggled to bequeath his successor something other than a complete disaster in the Middle East. But even if the efforts he has just made to contain the violence work, hard-liners on both sides will have gained a lot of ground. Mr. Barak now seeks to make common cause with Mr. Sharon; Mr. Arafat strives to bring Hamas into his administration.

At some point it may dawn on Israelis that continued seizures of Palestinian land and other arbitrary acts are incompatible with mutual respect and reconciliation. And Palestinians may realize that acts of violence against innocent civilians create fear and hatred rather than a desire to end the aggravations and injustices. One or both sides may even discover the principle that those who wish to be loved should first do something lovable.

For now, however, Palestinians face the possibility of even more humiliation, dispossessions and deaths than those they endured under the Oslo process. And Israel is retreating into a self-destructive siege mentality.

Thirty-three years of occupation have brutalized the Israeli conscript army, replaced Zionist idealism with cynicism and devalued Israel's self-image. The occupation has polarized Israeli politics and imbued it with issues of race and class. Many of Israel's best and brightest have emigrated to the United States.

In the end, neither Israelis nor Palestinians can live indefinitely with the situation they have created. Most understand that, distasteful as it may be, they have no realistic alternative to an eventual return to the negotiating table.

Many in the Arab and Muslim worlds now discount the ability of the United States to continue as mediator, following the Clinton administration's embrace of Israeli positions at Camp David. To convene this week's meeting, it took the Egyptian president, the secretaries general of the United Nations and the European Union and the king of Jordan.

It is true that President Clinton's participation made the crucial difference. The summit showed once again that the only nation with leverage over both Israelis and Palestinians remains the United States.

But Mr. Clinton has run out of time and credibility. He cannot restart the peace process, and his successor, whoever he is, will have to rebuild trust with both sides. Succumbing to campaign pressures for political posturing could make doing so much harder. The best gifts a presidential candidate can give himself and the people of the Middle East are a pause in rhetoric and a chance for a fresh start at peacemaking after the election.

Chas. W. Freeman, president of the Middle East Policy Council, was ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1989 to 1992.
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