Mideast’s Moment of Truth

The Middle East peace summit is scheduled to stagger to a beginning at Camp David today as the politically wounded leaders of Israel and the Palestinians meet. They will seek to finesse some of the great differences over a projected final settlement that months of lower-level negotiations couldn’t narrow.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat both know that the moment of truth is at hand. If they fail to make major progress toward producing a framework for peace they can expect a new explosion of violence that surely would set back peace hopes for years. President Clinton, who convened the summit at the Maryland retreat and who is eager for an international triumph before he leaves office in January, appears properly primed to use all the considerable political and economic leverage the United States possesses to push the process forward.

The issues on the table are the most difficult to be considered, not least because they are the most emotional: the boundaries of a Palestinian state, the Arab role in Jerusalem, Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Palestinian refugees. Many Palestinians insist they can settle only for full sovereignty over the West Bank, a capital in East Jerusalem and the right of millions in the Palestinian diaspora to return to their former homes in Israel. Barak, echoing the views of nearly all Israelis, has promised that Israel won’t return to its 1967 borders, that it won’t share sovereignty in Jerusalem and that it won’t accept “moral or legal responsibility” for Palestinian refugees. If there is to be a settlement and peace, the two sides must break the stalemate on these issues. Then they must persuade their fractious constituencies that the deal they struck was the best that could be had.

Arafat, heading a corrupt and inefficient administration, may command less support now than ever in his long career. Barak, though handily elected prime minister little more than a year ago, now finds himself trailing even the discredited former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in opinion polls among Israelis. Meanwhile, his always shaky coalition government has fallen apart, leaving him with only a minority base in parliament, where on Monday he survived a no-confidence vote. Barak, however, points to polls showing that a majority of Israelis favor the Camp David summit and still support making compromises for peace. That, he says, is his true mandate. Barak has said all along that peace requires mutual concessions. Those two words remain the key to successful peacemaking.