Arab States

EARLY IN THE NEW YEAR could there be peace between Israel and Syria and peace between Israel and most of the Arab world?This heady prospect emerges from Secretary of State Warren Christopher's latest trip to the Middle East -- a trip that produced an agreement by Syrian President Hafez Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to end a six-month stalemate over the Golan Heights and enter negotiations without preconditions.For both these Middle East leaders, this is the test of their long careers.

Washington -- AS MIDDLE Eastern shouting matches go, the one last weekend at Blair House, the residence across from the )) White House, between Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was probably in the top 10, said one observer.While their host, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, watched in pain, Messrs. Moussa and Peres ripped each other apart. Mr. Moussa told Mr. Peres that Israel had started the 1967 war, fulminated that Israel, with its nuclear weapons, still wanted to dominate the Middle East, and insisted that Israel was entitled to "normal" relations with Egypt, not a "special relationship."

The decision of six Persian Gulf countries led by Saudi Arabia to end their secondary and tertiary boycotts of Israel shows Israelis that making peace with the Palestinians leads to a general acceptance in the Middle East. It also puts Saudi Arabia, always shy about policies of accommodation, visibly in support of the peace process.The boycott, which began as a prohibition of Arab firms from doing business with Jews in Palestine in 1946, turned into a boycott of Israel in 1948 and of firms that do business with Israel (the secondary boycott)

JERUSALEM -- Israel is poised to achieve a goal it has sought since 1948 when Jordan becomes the third of its five hostile Arab neighbors to agree to a peace with the Jewish state.Only Syria and its understudy, Lebanon, will remain among the front-line Arab states still officially at war with Israel if a peace treaty, as expected, comes after the Israel-Jordan summit July 25.Israel's strategy to make peace one by one with the Arab states has claimed another success with the abrupt announcement Friday that Jordan's King Hussein will hold a first-ever public meeting with Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in Washington next week.

Many Americans are confused by the world of Islam andAmerica's role in that world. Shaped by the news stories of the last 15 years, our shared images of the Middle East form a montage of bewilderment.In the early 1980s, the explosive chaos of Beirut. A decade of deadly stalemate of the Iran-Iraq war. The black smoke of Kuwaiti oil. The images are sharp, but we lack connective understanding.Milton Viorst unravels the stories behind these images and provides a welcome historical context in "Sandcastles: The Arabs in Search of the Modern World."

The Supreme Court of Israel dealt the government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a cruel blow in affirming its right to deport 415 Palestinians, 396 of whom languish in no man's land on the Lebanese border. The deportation has brought Israel international opprobrium. It has displayed Israel as outsmarted by Syria's dictator, Hafez el Assad, who insured that the men could not enter Lebanon. It has probably strengthened rather than weakened Hamas, the fundamentalist extremist group that Israel wants to weaken.

WASHINGTON -- Syria, Lebanon and Jordan postponed the departure of their negotiating teams yesterday for the second round of peace talks with Israel in Washington, joining the Palestinians in protest over Israel's planned deportation of 12 Palestinians from the occupied territories.But U.S. officials said that they expected the Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians and Lebanese to turn up in Washington, where the talks are scheduled to resume at the State Department on Tuesday.The officials said that the four delegations apparently felt the need to make some gesture of protest over the Israeli actions but that none of them appeared to want to scuttle the talks over the issue.

WASHINGTON -- Palestinians put their participation in the Middle East peace process in doubt yesterday to protest Israel's planned deportation of 12 Arabs from the occupied territories.As Palestinian negotiators delayed their departure for Washington, the United States issued an unusually tough condemnation of the Israeli deportations.Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi, accusing Israel of trying to sabotage the peace process, said negotiators were waiting for the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunis, Tunisia, to decide on further participation.

The repeal of the United Nations General Assembly resolution of 1975 condemning Zionism as racism is welcome and overdue. It removes a stain on the integrity of the world body.Zionism, the ideology which founded Israel as a Jewish state, is racist to the extent that almost every nationalism is racism. And no more.The resolution adopted in 1975 by a vote of 72-35 with 32 abstentions implied that Israel was illegitimate and that its Arab neighbors ought not to make peace with it. That vote was testament to the Arab hold on Third World ideology and Soviet demagogy.

Local Jewish officials exulted after the United Nations General Assembly yesterday rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism."It's long overdue, and I'm elated," said Isaiah Kuperstein, the executive director of the Baltimore district chapter of the Zionist Organization of America.Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people can lay claim to their biblical homeland in the Middle East. Arabs have countered that this notion is racist because it excludes non-Jews from the territory.