Why All Eyes Are on the Palestinians : U.S. and Israel move to break Mideast peace talks impasse

Concerned over continuing deadlock in the Middle East peace talks and sensing that the time for making progress may be running out, the United States has begun to shift its role from sponsor of the process to active mediator.

First, the Clinton Administration has made a number of informal but apparently controversial new proposals to Israel and the Palestinians--the details of which are still secret--concerning the future of Jerusalem and the extent of Palestinian self-governance powers in the disputed territories during the projected transition leading up to a final settlement.

Second, Secretary of State Warren Christopher is sending some top aides to the Middle East to meet with the political leaders from whom the negotiators in Washington take their orders. The hope is that those meetings will be able to shake some movement back into the stalled talks. If Christopher’s emissaries feel further progress is possible, the secretary himself is likely to invest his own prestige in a journey to the area.

What the United States would like is to find some common ground where right now neither side is willing to be the first to set foot. This is the classic mediator’s role, getting one side to agree to yield on an issue dear to its heart, provided the other side makes a simultaneous concession. That the process has even reached the point where substantive compromises are possible is itself an achievement too easily overlooked after 20 months of seemingly unproductive intermittent meetings. The notable fact is that the political and psychological atmosphere that had prevailed for decades has changed dramatically in the last few years. Civil discussions are taking place and certain basic underlying assumptions are now openly or tacitly mutually accepted.

Little of this would have been possible if a right-wing Likud government still held power in Israel. Likud’s policy was that it would not yield one inch of the territories taken by Israel in the 1967 war nor would it sign an autonomy agreement that would turn over any real political power to the nearly 2 million Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The successor Labor-led coalition is, however, prepared to make far-reaching territorial and political compromises to get a settlement. The question now is whether the Palestinians are able to respond to this greatly moderated position with equal flexibility.

The answer so far isn’t encouraging. As the latest round of talks ended this week Hanan Ashrawi, the spokeswoman for the Palestinians, indicated a probable rejection of Israel’s substantial offer to cede to the Palestinians most of the day-to-day control over their own lives. The reason, she said, was a concern that if the Palestinians accepted a less than total transfer of power it could end up being all they would get.

No doubt that concern exists, just as some Israelis are concerned that conceding anything to the Palestinians would only prompt demands that they give up more and more, until nothing was left to give. But there can be no doubt either that if the Palestinians stick to a maximalist position they risk coming out of the talks not with half or two-thirds of a loaf but with no bread at all. All now depends on a readiness to compromise. For the Palestinians that means rejecting the arguments--and, even more to the point, the threats--of the radicals in their ranks. The alternative, refusing to settle for anything less than the absolutist position, only guarantees failure.