o nitpick at the alternative blueprint for Middle East peace presented yesterday in Geneva is to miss the importance of the exercise. Sure, there are elements that require more work, more elaboration, more debate. What is truly momentous is that Israelis and Palestinians of good will have done what their current leaders have shown themselves incapable of doing, and what the United States has long urged the two sides to do: declaring in concrete terms how their conflict can end. This courageous feat by Yossi Beilin and Yasir Abed Rabbo should be welcomed, and built on.

The usual extremists immediately pounced on the Geneva Accord as an act of treason to their respective causes. Palestinian radicals predictably focused on the provisions that effectively deny Palestinian refugees a blanket right of return to former homes in what is now Israel, though such a step has long been inevitable. Yasir Arafat, who was tacitly behind the negotiations, did what he always does under pressure — he waffled. Israeli hard-liners denounced the sharing of Jerusalem and the evacuation of most settlements.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made no effort to conceal his hostility for the accord. His spokesman said it was tantamount to suicide by Israel and a "Swiss golden calf" for the Israeli left.

The Geneva document is hardly radical. It calls for two neighboring states with two capitals in Jerusalem, the evacuation of most Jewish settlements and the incorporation of the rest into Israel in exchange for an equivalent amount of land. It also calls for a limit, to be set by Israel, on the number of Palestinian refugees who can settle in Israel, and compensation or resettlement for the rest.

There is plenty left to negotiate here. But the fact is that this is more or less how it has to end. Neither side will have all of Jerusalem. The Palestinian refugees will not all come back, effectively overwhelming the Jewish state. Many settlers will have to go. The alternative is for the antagonists to continue their endless arguments over whose religion grants what land to whom, and to continue killing each other, dragging the rest of the world deeper and deeper into the fray. The principles of the Geneva Accord are the right way to go.