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                                                                                ISRAEL, Page 48

Great Expectations


By pushing to speed up peace talks, Yitzhak Rabin has left Washington
smiling but the Palestinians scrambling to forge a counterproposal

By J.F.O. MCALLISTER/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by Lisa Beyer/
Jerusalem and Dean Fischer/Amman


    Now that the cold war is over, one can sometimes hear
diplomats gently rue its passing: communism was terrible, but
at least you knew where you stood. Yitzhak Rabin's first days
as Israel's Prime Minister have put Arabs and Palestinians in
a similar bind. He has yanked open the door to serious
negotiations against which they had been pushing, only to find
them in a tangled heap on the floor, their muscles stiff and
unprepared for a vigorous pas de deux.

    Can the parties figure out how to dance together now that
Rabin has raised great expectations? Secretary of State James
Baker, the master choreographer of the peace process, is
traveling around the Middle East this week to see. His task is
not easy. Even with an Israeli government genuinely committed
to negotiating, the tactical challenges of bringing all the
parties together are still complex. And if Baker decides to
leave the State Department to run President Bush's re-election
campaign, as officials widely forecast last week, he has less
than a month before the Republican Convention to give the talks
his personal impetus.

    Each party has its own agenda and political constraints in
approaching the others. Rabin has three immediate priorities,
all linked: quick progress with the Palestinians; repairing the
damage done to Israel's ties with Washington during the tenure
of his predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir; rerouting Israeli shekels
from building settlements in the occupied territories to
creating jobs and absorbing immigrants.

    His electrifying maiden speech to the Knesset was intended
to warm the atmosphere with the Palestinians. Differentiating
himself from the intransigent Shamir, Rabin set a reasoned and
pragmatic tone, inviting the Palestinian negotiators for an
informal parley before the next formal session in Rome, in a
month or two, and pledging to bargain continuously until
agreement is reached. "Rabin believes that the expectations the
Israeli public has of him are very high," says Gad Yaacobi,
designated to become Israel's next U.N. ambassador. "He would
like to fulfill them early on in his term so as not to erode his
political capital." In a more concrete vein, Housing Minister
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer announced that the government was for the
moment freezing all public housing starts in the settlements and
was determining what to do with thousands of units already
begun. Israel hopes its eagerness to make progress on this
contentious issue will allow it to enlist Washington's help in
delivering the Arabs, instead of Arabs' employing Washington's
leverage to put pressure on a recalcitrant Israel.

    That strategy makes Palestinian negotiators anxious. They
must show tangible results quickly to fend off fundamentalist
opponents, yet must satisfy multiple constituencies -- factions
in the territories and the Palestine Liberation Organization,
Palestinians in camps and abroad -- before they can make any
concessions. Publicly, their negotiators professed disdain for
Rabin's speech, exaggerating its tough elements and ignoring its
invitations for cooperation.

    The Palestinians rightly seek deeds from Rabin as well as
words, but in fact his words caught the peace delegation off
guard. They are not accustomed to Israel's setting the pace for
substantive talks. They must now take seriously Rabin's campaign
promise to complete the arrangements for Palestinian autonomy
in nine months, and they are not ready. They lack a coherent
negotiating strategy, a clear chain of command, qualified
technical advisers, even a unified set of position papers. "We
are a bunch of academics and politicians who are not qualified
to run technical negotiations," admits a team member. Meanwhile,
the Palestinians want Rabin to flesh out exactly what kind of
autonomy he has in mind. Last week he insisted that he would not
stand for a full-fledged legislature in the occupied
territories, as the Palestinians want, only an elected
"administrative council." Says a West Bank delegate: "For us,
Rabin gets scary when he starts talking about the details."

    The Israelis are expected to concentrate on the big
picture instead of trying to settle one issue at a time before
moving to the next. They could draft an agreement in principle
on the transfer of power to an interim government in the
territories, then let working groups spell out the specifics.
Palestinian negotiators would like this approach, and anticipate
that Rabin's basic proposal for autonomy will be, in spokeswoman
Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi's words, "much more comprehensive and
serious" than Shamir's. But they are looking first for some
tangible gestures to set the right tone: a complete brake on
settlements and an end to harsh occupation rules.

    Israel's Arab neighbors are also struggling to respond.
Although no Arab leader from a confrontation state has publicly
praised Rabin's pledge to speed negotiations, or accepted his
call to an immediate summit, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak
invited the Prime Minister to Cairo this week to encourage and
reward Israel's moderation. Deep political divisions in the Arab
world, sharpened by Jordan's decision to side with Saddam
Hussein in the gulf war, are responsible for the limp response;
Arab leaders do not trust one another and need time to grope
toward a common approach to the Rabin era.

    Syria faces a particularly delicate balancing act. Rabin's
strategy of focusing first on a Palestinian settlement irritates
President Hafez Assad, who is skeptical about ever achieving
peace with Israel and is determined that no Arab party should
conclude a separate deal. Even if Damascus-Jerusalem talks do
proceed, Rabin has taken a very tough line on returning the
Golan Heights, captured in the 1967 war. Yet without Moscow as
a patron, Assad has little choice but to renounce his
traditional role of spoiler and board the peace train if he
wants access to Western trade and investment.

    Rabin's forthcoming attitude can only be good news for
Jordan's King Hussein, who has bargained secretly with Israeli
leaders for years. Helping prod the peace process is his best
ticket to rehabilitation in Washington and to defusing the
appeal of his own fundamentalist opponents, the Muslim
Brotherhood. But Hussein faces an awkward problem: Should Jordan
eventually confederate with the Palestinians, giving them a
state they can call their own but that they may come to
dominate? A senior parliamentarian argues that the King will
eventually have to accept this as the only stable solution.
P.L.O. leader Yasser Arafat has also been pressing for
confederation, to counter the growing influence of local leaders
like Faisal Husseini of Jerusalem.

    U.S. officials are silent about any specific proposals
Baker may advance to push negotiations ahead. They are still not
looking to become direct participants in the talks, but
Washington remains the essential catalyst for peacemaking. Baker
would prefer to direct that effort himself. If he does depart
for Bush's campaign, it could give the peace process a
backhanded boost: the parties have come to trust his mediation,
and smart hands might grasp the wisdom of making deals while the
Bush Administration is still in charge.