The Middle East: Dancing at Camp David - Brief Article

It's on, it's off, it's on again, and finally it's over. Events at Camp David had the formality of steps in a barn dance-with this difference: Onlookers are rightly terrified of what will happen now that the music has stopped. Doomsday scenarios abound, and any one of them is possible. Expectations have been raised so high that it is hard to return to stalemate as usual.

For many years now, the issues at stake have been analyzed with minute expertise from every angle-and, alas, fought over. Irresistible forces meet immovable objects. The whole complex of Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlements on the West Bank throws up practical questions of borders-and abstract definitions of identity-that are intractable. Among ingenious proposals just for the future of Jerusalem are internationalization, U.N. trusteeship, an open city, a corpus separatum, and many versions of shared or joint sovereignty or autonomy between Israelis and Palestinians. However inventive the lawyers, the result is invariably the same: Two into one won't go.

Worthy as the aim for peace in the Middle East certainly is, President Clinton's initiative in summoning and attempting to influence these talks carried great and open-ended risks.

Prime Minister Barak and Yasser Arafat were invited to compromise their highest interests and claims in the knowledge that each could convince only a doubtful percentage of his people. Too much compromise, and nationalist rage on either side boils over into violence. Too little compromise, and frustration also boils over into violence.

Decisions reached under the conditions of Camp David offered every scope for the law of unintended consequences to come into play. Israel was-and still is-urged to give birth to a Palestine that one day might appeal for the loyalty of Israeli Arabs, thus fragmenting Israel. And do not forget Jordan: Palestinians already form a majority in Jordan, and may one day fragment that country too. Three into one won't go either.

Political and historical enmities and fears of such magnitude are resolved only over long periods of time. Those all-night sessions instead consisted of horse-trading between ambitious men in search of personal advantage. We may be grateful that the irreconcilable positions of Israelis and Palestinians have been clarified for all to see, and presented to the public as matters of regret rather than declarations of war. Statements along the lines of a debating society, to the effect that progress has been made, more will be made in further talks, and this house believes that progress is a good thing, may help to hold Doomsday off. We may be grateful too that the United States failed in its bid to pressure smaller players into jeopardizing their peoples and their futures. The harm that "success" might have done hardly bears thinking about.

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