Surely the fandango that is the peace process in the Middle East will be on again soon.
The leaders of Arab Palestine never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. As the week began they were threatening to boycott the Washington peace conference, scheduled to resume Tuesday, to protest Israel`s expulsion of 12 Arabs from the West Bank and Gaza after a series of armed assaults on Jews there, including four killings since the ”peace” process began.
The threat to stay away may be the first serious misstep the Palestinians have taken in their otherwise artful handling of American public opinion. Americans tend to line up against anyone who won`t talk peace. Surely the leaders of the Palestinian delegation will show up in Washington. They have the most to gain from the talks: the beginnings of a Palestinian state.
Whether expelling these suspects is legal under international law is a complex question that is not going to be resolved-and therefore needs to be bypassed. Many a futile hour could be wasted arguing fine points, but the question would still remain a ”pernicious abstraction.”
That`s how Abraham Lincoln described the oh-so-serious issue of whether the Southern states had left the Union and would have to be re-admitted, or whether they still retained their place in an indivisible Union-and their congressional seats. Lincoln simply set aside such conundrums and proceeded to make peace, putting together a framework all could accept. That is precisely what Israel, a nascent Arab Palestine, the other Arab states, and Washington should do now.
The Arab leaders have nothing to gain by delays. Every planeload of Jewish immigrants from Russia further tilts the balance of power against the Arab cause. And the intifada (the Arab uprising) not only has failed but is devouring its own.
Too many opportunities for peace already have been missed. Yet a settlement can be reached, and ways around the most pernicious of abstractions can be found if both sides come to see what they have to gain by peace.
What will be needed most as this fandango continues is a vision of peace as powerful as the pride that leads to war. It won`t do to put together some paper compromise and defend it as the best that both sides can hope for. The whole of peace must appear greater than the sum of its carefully negotiated parts.
Among messianic peoples, an abstraction, however pernicious, can be defeated only by another abstraction. Both sides will need to exchange old myths for new and better ones. Washington has supplied the site, the impetus, its services as broker, and remarkable patience. Now only one more element need be found: a unifying vision.