Amos Perlmutter

The Oslo accord has failed. Battered by a wave of fundamentalist terrorism, Israelis are ready to elect a hard-line Likud government, while many frustrated Palestinians are spurning the plo in favor of the Islamic extremists of Hamas. Locked in a political embrace, ploChairman Yasir Arafat and Israeli PrimeMinister Yitzhak Rabin are dragging each other down. The process may stagger on, but it will never yield peace.

With the 'intifadeh', the Palestinians have emulated "the spirit and strategy of classical Zionism". For Israelis, it represents the poisoning of a dream, and imposes the dilemma of 'territory or peace' upon "the world's only fortress democracy". The essential basis for a settlement is (1) withdrawal from the territories occupied since 1967 (2) tangible security guarantees (3) partition of sovereignty within an Israeli-Jordanian- Palestinian confederation.

If one looks long enough at recent events in Lebanon, one can see emerging the new face of Israel's Begin government, a face markedly different from the first government of Menachem Begin. That first Begin government, which toppled a decaying and increasingly ineffectual Labor Party, had its moderate and restraining elements whose crowning achievement was the Camp David Accords. The then Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, along with Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, were the reins on Begin's often frightening rhetoric, steering Begin away from the effects of his worst instincts.

The peace treaty ratified by Egypt and Israel on March 29, 1979 is neither an end to a problem nor a fresh point of departure in the efforts to resolve it. Rather, it represents a stage in a protracted series of negotiations, misunderstandings, cajoleries, and tacit agreements extending back for years. All these will continue-but the situation has changed, for Egypt and Israel now have a document with which they can map out their future haggling.

Two new major actors are on the scene in Middle Eastern negotiations, dormant since the Sinai II troop disengagement agreement of September 1975. Jimmy Carter, a political newcomer inexperienced in international politics, is President of the United States, and the ancient militant, Menachem Begin, who never expected to become Israel's Prime Minister, is exactly that. While the President's mind is not set as yet on an American strategy for the Middle East, the Prime Minister's preconceptions were formed four decades ago. For nearly 40 years, Menachem Begin has not changed his essential position, modified his beliefs, or wavered in his commitment and dedication to the cause of Eretz Yisrael (land of Israel). The two leaders could not be more different in personality and style nor come from more widely differing political orientations. They do have in common a moral, principled, even puritanical stance and commitment, but there the similarity ends.