Peace With Israel

THEY ALL CAME -- the presidents of the United States and France, the prime ministers of Britain and Russia, the chancellor of Germany, more than 40 world leaders to mourn the murder of Yitzhak Rabin and, by their presence, to pay a remarkable tribute to the modern state of Israel. Yet the most significant visitors by far came not from the big powers but from Arab states hostile to Israel at its founding.President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was there, walking in the footsteps of his martyred predecessor, Anwar Sadat, who defied the whole Islamic world and endured its ostracism in making peace with Israel.

The Sun editorial "Mr. Abbas' mission" (Feb. 13) is a triumph of wishful thinking over analysis. Its self-contradictions and omissions include: •Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas "would have to exercise the kind of statesmanship that has been sadly lacking among the Palestinians for generations" to lead a unity government of his Fatah movement and the terrorist Hamas to peace with Israel. "It's too early to say" if he could. It's hardly too early to say the 74-year-old Mr. Abbas can't and won't.

EAI hasn't flunked yet. This is mid-terms.PLO made peace with Israel. Jordan made peace with Israel. Now PLO and Jordan should make up.It looks like we won't be bombing North Korea after all. Shucks.

Signs of movement toward renewed cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have Israeli officials on edge. Israel considers Hamas a terrorist organization committed to its destruction and has shunned negotiations. In the wake of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' efforts last fall to sidestep negotiations with Israel and seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state, it is easy to see this as another ominous sign for the prospects for peace. But there is another possibility at work.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush insisted yesterday that "there is real cause for optimism" in his efforts to win a Middle East peace conference despite obstacles that remain following Secretary of State James A. Baker III's latest mission to the region.Mr. Bush made his announcement to reporters after he and Mr. Baker put through a call to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as they met to discuss the results of the Baker trip that ended Thursday night.The president refused to discuss any details of the call or explain the reasons for his optimism, citing the sensitivity of the negotiations.

Syria holds the key to Arab peace with Israel. If Syria traded peace for Golan, the rug would be pulled out from those who wish to continue war. Secretary of State Warren Christopher's Middle East shuttle diplomacy is seeking no less than that.While using the same Middle East adviser, Dennis Ross, that his predecessor James A. Baker III brought to the State Department, Mr. Christopher has shunned Mr. Baker's studied detachment. He is not merely bringing the parties together and seeking influence behind the scenes, he is aggressively and publicly involved and putting U.S. proposals forward.

With the Washington Declaration, Israel has now made peace with three of its neighbors, Egypt, Palestine and Jordan. That leaves the northern border with Syria and Lebanon, where terrorism remains an irritant but not a threat to the state. The PLO's separate peace led directly to Jordan's, which adds to the pressure on Syria and its Lebanese protectorate to follow.Jordan is an important addition to the circle of peace because the prospects of cooperation between it and Israel flow so naturally from geography.

Nowhere is Islamic fundamentalism a greater danger to the U.S. foreign policy that President-elect Clinton will inherit than in Egypt. The peace between Egypt and Israel brokered by the Carter administration in the 1970s remains the cornerstone for all further peace efforts. An overthrow of the moderate and canny regime of Hosni Mubarak from a fundamentalist flank would renounce recognition of Israel and be a disaster for peace.But in Egypt as elsewhere, fundamentalist extremism feeds on economic distress.

Q: WHAT DOES Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin call it when more of his countrymen have been killed by Palestinian terrorists in the past 23 months than in any 23-month period in Israel's history; when Palestinian attacks are now concentrated inside Israel's pre-1967 borders; when every several weeks a bus filled with Jewish passengers is exploded by a suicide bomber; when even the president of Israel, a steadfast dove, says of his nation's agreement with...

JERUSALEM -- On the day Jordanians were told their king was ready to sign a peace treaty with Israel, the Amman newspaper al-Mustakbal asked people what they would do if an Israeli wanted to visit their home."

Regarding your editorial "Obama and the Arab Spring" (May 20), your assessment that the president laid out a "pragmatic, nuanced approach to the region" is not borne out by the realities on the ground. The region is still embroiled in chaos and conflict. Most recently Coptic Christians and Islamists have clashed in Egypt. Libya seems mired in stalemate. Bahrain and Syria continue repression and murder of protesters on the streets. And Saudi Arabia's royal family is not even remotely ready for democracy.

YASSER ARAFAT is dead. A so-called moderate is now chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Elections to choose a Palestinian Authority president are scheduled in the West Bank and Gaza for early January. Optimists see an opportunity for restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the possibility of a meaningful and comprehensive settlement of the conflict. But whether this will really prove to be a positive turning point in the search for peace in the Middle East depends on whether we have learned from the failures of the past.

WASHINGTON - You know when I really get mad? It's when my wife tells me I'm not helping around the house - and I have not been helping around the house. There is nothing more enraging than someone exposing your faults - and being right. What is true at home is true in diplomacy. I was reminded of that watching the enraged, hysterical reaction of Israel's ruling Likud Party to the virtual peace treaty - known as the Geneva Accord - that was hammered out by Yossi Beilin, the former Israeli justice minister, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, the former Palestinian information minister.

JERUSALEM - Hours after Palestinian militants killed five Israeli soldiers in two attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon faced a raucous and sometimes volatile crowd of fellow Likud Party members last night and defended his support for a U.S.-backed peace plan. Staring at hundreds of ultranationalists holding placards and loudly accusing him of "yielding to terror," Sharon calmly stood at a convention hall lectern and told his party's divided Central Committee that Israel would cautiously follow the "road map" to peace.

Hateful propaganda leads Muslim world to detest the West I agree with Thomas L. Friedman to the extent that he applauds the Bush administration's move to increase foreign aid to poor countries and asks for a foreign policy that pursues a course of "enlightened self-interest" ("Let's set a moral example for the world," Opinion * Commentary, March 20). But he is very wrong to assume the Muslims who hate us do so because of our greed or support for their bad regimes or anything we have done.

WASHINGTON - The escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is damaging the fragile relations that the United States and Israel have developed with moderate Arab states, eroding the progress made in the decade since the Persian Gulf war. It has also made it harder for the Bush administration to isolate Iraq and gain Arab support for its drive to topple the government of President Saddam Hussein. Leaders in Jordan and Egypt, the only Arab states to have made peace with Israel, face growing anti-Israel sentiment that is increasingly directed against the United States as well.

KISLOVODSK, U.S.S.R. -- The Soviet Union said yesterday that it would co-sponsor a Middle East peace conference with the United States if the superpowers could broker an accord that would bring Israel and its Arab neighbors to the table.The Soviets thus signaled a readiness to resume full diplomatic relations with Israel. Israel has made its acceptance of a Soviet sponsoring role at a peace conference contingent on normalizing relations.Soviet Foreign Minister Alexander A. Bessmertnykh, who met with Secretary of State James A. Baker III in this Caucasus Mountain resort, said the Soviet Union and the United States would try to resolve differences between Israel and Arab states over terms for holding a conference.

MADABA, Jordan -- On the second day of the 1967 War, Israeli soldiers stuck a gun to the head of Mohammed Mousa and threatened to kill him. They chased his wife and four children from their home near Jerusalem, which they never saw again.Yet today, Mr. Mousa, 50, welcomes the prospect of peace between Israel and Jordan, his adopted home."It would be better for everyone," he said.Shukri Qiraja, now 62, was a soldier in Jordan's Arab Legion, guarding Jerusalem's Damascus Gate when the Israelis stormed through in that war. He hurriedly changed from his uniform to civilian clothes, and later slipped back to Amman to complete 24 years in the military.

WASHINGTON - For years, American presidents have walked a fine line in the Middle East, balancing U.S. friendship and support for Israel with a need to be seen in the Arab world as fair peace brokers between Palestinians and the Jewish state. But after last weekend's Palestinian suicide bombings in Israel, and a so-far successful military campaign in Afghanistan, President Bush has, at least for now, become Israel's public partner in a joint war against terrorists. And that has changed the balance in the peace process - with Israel and the United States now more nearly on one side, and Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority alone on the other.

JERUSALEM - Since 1948, when Israel was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land carelessly called "the Arab world," the conflict has been not about what land Israel should occupy but whether it should occupy any land. The conflict has been constantly violent but now, in today's world climate of appeasement, the Palestinians' violence is self-legitimizing: The assumption always is that they must have been provoked. Today, and as usual, the problem is not that Israel is being provocative, but that Israel's being is provocative.