A Mideast turnabout?

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

MIDDLE EAST skeptics were sounding the death knell for the latest deal to reduce Israeli-Palestinian violence even before the first Israeli troops were pulled back. The cease-fire plan is indeed ridden with uncertainties. But as the first security agreement worked out directly between the contending parties (rather than through U.S. mediation), since the start of the second intifada in September 2000, it could mark the beginning of a more hopeful phase of the crisis.

Drawbacks for the scheme include the vow of Palestinian extremists -- including Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- to ignore the terms worked out between Palestinian Authority Interior Minister Abdel Razek Yehiyeh and Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer. Those opponents of any peace with Israel are heartless enough to sabotage the cease-fire by continuing attacks on Israeli targets, no matter what the cost in suffering by Palestinian civilians from severe deprivation and loss of their freedom.

In exchange for withdrawals of Israeli military in the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem, Palestinian security forces are supposed to take steps to "reduce terror and violence" in those truce areas, which presumably would be expanded to other parts of the reoccupied West Bank if the initial plan succeeds. But the Palestinian Authority's security capability has been largely destroyed in the Israeli incursions focused on the terrorist infrastructure behind suicide bombings and other outrages.

The prospect for the cease-fire is not helped by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's coolness toward it, and its entanglement in Israeli politics. Ben- Eliezer, of the Labor Party, is seen positioning himself for a future bid to unseat the Likud's Sharon, or to battle a politically reborn Benjamin Netanyahu.

If leaders on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides push for the best interests of their embattled peoples, this sensible phasing out of conflict will progress as it should. We wish it were that simple.

©2002 San Francisco Chronicle