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Time Running Out

Published: April 11, 1997

Dr. Eyad Sarraj is a Palestinian psychiatrist in Gaza and a campaigner for human rights. I wrote about him last year when he criticized the Palestinian Authority for mistreatment of prisoners and was then himself imprisoned for 25 days.

Dr. Sarraj is a longtime advocate of peace with Israel. He supported the Camp David agreement when the P.L.O. rejected it. He took part in the post-Madrid peace negotiations in Washington. But now he sees belief in the possibility of peace fading. So he said during a visit to Boston to receive an award from Physicians for Human Rights.

''People wanted to believe that this peace process would lead to something,'' he said, ''that Netanyahu would go along with it, that he might even be better for it.

''Then came Har Homa $(the Israeli settlement project in East Jerusalem$). It undermined that thinking. It gave the opponents of peace the chance to say, 'We told you Israel didn't really want peace.'

''Netanyahu's shortsightedness is so painful. All he can see is his power. He plays on fear to build support. The result will be violence, repression, more violence. Everything will erupt, but Israelis will cling to him in the storm. He will survive -- on the bones of the dead.''

Dr. Sarraj was talking about despair and bitterness in his own community in Gaza. But the feelings he described are widespread among Palestinians now. In a recent poll, taken by the Center for Palestine Research and Studies in Nablus in the West Bank, 52 percent agreed with the statement, ''There is no possibility of reaching a solution acceptable to the two parties.'' It was the first time the poll had found a majority for that position.

No realist can doubt that Prime Minister Netanyahu's recent acts have caused an ominous loss of hope for peace among Palestinians. And not just Palestinians. The Financial Times of London summed up the wider significance:

''Arab governments have lost confidence in the peace process. They are themselves under varying degrees of challenge from Islamic revivalists, and every Israeli step back from peace undermines them.''

The Clinton Administration's response to this crisis in one of its proudest achievements, the Middle East peace process, seems curiously low-key.

''We want to help,'' I was told in Washington this week, ''but we can't unless the parties give us something to work with. Netanyahu will be Prime Minister for the next four years. Criticizing him openly would only build support for his policy.''

U.S. officials say they still hope that gestures from the two sides will let talks resume. Mr. Netanyahu, for example, could let the Palestinians open their airport. (Officials seem to have given up hope of persuading him to suspend work on Har Homa.) Yasir Arafat could talk tougher on terrorism.

But why would the Palestinians see any point in negotiations with an Israeli leader who thinks they are not even worth informing before he acts in the most sensitive area, Jerusalem? How can they have any hope of negotiating their minimum objective, a meaningful homeland, with a man who seems to rule it out?

President Clinton's description of his meeting with Mr. Netanyahu this week -- ''very specific, frank, candid and long'' -- made it plain enough that he was critical of what the Israeli Prime Minister has done. But can private disagreement be enough? And isn't the real reason for keeping it private concern about the reaction of Israel's American supporters?

Only a bold American demarche, I fear, can save the peace process from crumbling altogether now for lack of trust. Only an American President can make the dominant party in the conflict, our ally Israel, see again the truth that security lies not in particular bits of territory but in a peace that gives Palestinians the dignity to build a stable society.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a skillful politician. But he seems to lack the crucial ingredient for a leader who wants to settle an aching conflict. That is the ability to see the other side's needs and treat it with generosity.

 

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