Why the Peace Process Moves

By Jackson Diehl

Monday, July 21, 2003

The paradox of the latest Israeli-Palestinian peace process is that just about everyone charged with carrying it out is deeply skeptical it can succeed -- yet somehow, week after week, it crawls slowly forward.

Senior Israeli officials grumble that Palestinian security forces are still dodging the job of dismantling the armed extremist organizations in the Gaza Strip, even if a cease-fire has mostly held for the past three weeks. But one official couldn't help marveling last week over the change on Palestinian state television, which has taken to broadcasting footage of children singing peace songs in Hebrew.

A Palestinian businessman in Washington for meetings with administration officials pointed out that there are more Israeli settlement outposts in the West Bank today than there were six weeks ago, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised at the Aqaba summit to begin dismantling them. Even so, describing the relief of an exhausted populace in Gaza over the withdrawal of Israeli roadblocks, he predicted that the cease-fire would hold. "There is a momentum now," he said. "People don't want to go back."

The prevailing skepticism is focused on the leadership of each side, and with pretty good reason. Somewhat remarkably, Israeli officials appear almost unanimous in viewing the Palestinians' new representative, Mahmoud Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen, as sincere in his commitment to ending the conflict -- suggesting that Palestinians at last have a leader who is trusted in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. But Israelis doubt that the uncharismatic prime minister has the strength to deliver on his commitments, or to overcome the constant attempts to sabotage him by his nominal partner, Yasser Arafat.

Palestinians, for their part, have observed the slow shift in position by Sharon's Likud party, which in the past few years has gone from militantly rejecting a two-state solution to acknowledging that some kind of Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza is inevitable -- and necessary to preserve a Jewish Israel. But they -- like some in the Bush administration -- see no sign that Sharon and his party are ready to give up more than islands of West Bank territory to the Palestinians, or to stop building Jewish settlements on the 60 percent of the land they plan to retain.

So how does the process survive? It turns out that the intransigence and weakness of the three septuagenarian leaders is balanced by a surprisingly strong surge of public opinion in support of the process -- on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. Polls have been showing that more than two-thirds of both peoples want the peace process to go forward. Moreover, Israeli surveys show substantial majorities opposed to further assassinations of Palestinian militants and in favor of the dismantling of settlements; Palestinian polls show strong backing for the cease-fire. Last week a leading Palestinian pollster, Khalil Shikaki, deconstructed a favorite boogeyman of hard-liners on both sides: Most Palestinians, he found, would accept a negotiated solution that acknowledged but restricted the right of Palestinian refugees to settle in Israel, and relatively few of the refugees would choose to do so.

If it's looking risky for the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to disappoint their public, it's looking even riskier to fail President Bush. The White House keeps surprising both sides with its level of engagement, and willingness to be aggressive; just at the moment when Bush might have been expected to settle for the cease-fire and adjourn to Crawford, he summoned both Abu Mazen and Sharon to Washington. Both will be expected to have fresh action to report by the time they arrive at the White House, four and eight days from now; Sharon in particular is under pressure to "help" Abu Mazen with prisoner releases and settlement removals.

Oddly, the only principal to the process who appears immune to the naysaying conventional wisdom is Bush, the relative newcomer to an old game. Whatever his real expectations, the president has succeeded in convincing players on all sides that he is serious about getting results. That impetus may not substitute for the inadequacies of Israeli and Palestinian leadership -- but when allied with the mounting expectations of people on the ground, it's been enough, so far, to keep the process alive.