Signs of bad faith

May 8, 2003

The curtain has barely gone up on the latest Mideast peace initiative and Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat, those implacable adversaries, already seem hell-bent on derailing the process. The Bush administration must move quickly to stop them, lest this chance for peace, the most promising in years, be ruined by the old, useless power games.

Sharon is playing a good-cop, bad-cop role. In a recent, revealing interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz, the 75-year-old prime minister--one of the country's few surviving founding fathers--mused about peace as his possible legacy.

Yet Sharon initially raised more than 100 objections to the road map to peace proposed by the Quartet--the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations--which forms the basis for the latest round of negotiations.

The number of caveats was whittled to 15. Now Sharon is focusing on just one, but it is a potential deal-killer. Before the two sides move deeply into the requirements of the road map, Sharon wants Palestinians to renounce their "right of return" to lands and properties they held before Israel was created in 1948.

At best, Sharon seems to be trying to delay a commitment on the road map until he visits Washington in the next few weeks. At worst, he may already have set out to sabotage it.

Yasser Arafat supposedly has been upstaged by the newly named Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen. In tense, last-minute negotiations between the two, Arafat was supposed to have ceded control over much of the Palestinian security apparatus to the new government.

Don't believe it. Reports indicate that Arafat retains control of key elements of the security machinery. That means that Abu Mazen--who has not yet cemented his leadership role--has to fight Arafat's minions, terrorist Palestinian groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the early perceptions that Sharon won't commit to the peace process. Not an enviable task.

The U.S. victory in Iraq has dramatically altered the regional power equation, and even Syria is grudgingly making some noises about peace. But leaders in the Israeli and Palestinian camps are old masters at intransigent behavior, and they could well wreck the best chance in years for a Mideast peace.

Secretary of State Colin Powell is expected in the region this weekend. He must make clear to both Israelis and Palestinians the seriousness of President Bush's support for the road map. This is a firm plan, not a wish list or rough draft to be whittled down into meaninglessness.

This won't succeed, however, if it is seen as only a U.S. production. Leaders of the UN, Russia and the EU also must bring intense pressure--they have greater leverage with the Palestinians--for serious movement.

The road map provides for eventual discussions on the right of return, which is politically and emotionally at the top of the Palestinian agenda. They will have to concede on that--not even most Palestinians seriously believe that several million of them are going to move back into Israel. But the road map purposefully delays that matter until later in the process. It is foolish to expect the Palestinians to make such an early concession before they see evidence of good faith on the part of Israel.

Watching the maneuvering by Sharon and Arafat, it is tempting to throw up one's hands and exclaim, "same old, same old."

That can't be. This moment for peace must not be lost. The alternative is in plain view: more of the horrendous death and destruction wrought by 31 months of Intifada.