News Analysis: on Diplomatic and Domestic Fronts, the Peace Process is Moving Forward

The Middle East peace process, almost dormant for years, seems suddenly to have evolved into two distinct and dramatic dynamics, each rushing ahead toward unpredictable conclusions.

But they are moving in parallel. And the main question for observers of this turbulent region is how, if at all, will they meet? For parallel lines, we are taught in geometry, never intersect.

These two political processes, moreover, are unfolding each according to its own internal dynamic, as though oblivious of one another.

One dynamic is diplomatic. Spurred on by a suddenly energetic and conciliatory Soviet Union, the leaders of the region have been drawn into a maelstrom of meetings, trips and talks.

The high point so far was Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze’s meetings in Cairo, on the same day last week, with Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat.

The venue, the timing, and the dramatis personae ensured that this day of diplomatic drama would seize top headlines around the world.

The fact that all participants in both meetings came out smiling served to strengthen the impact of the Soviet initiative upon world opinion.

The United States has sought to retain a cool, almost condescending detachment.

President George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker have repeatedly insisted that they will not be prodded into premature actions by high-profile Soviet diplomacy.

FOCUS OF TALKS IN WASHINGTON

But when the president met with the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israel’s President Chaim Herzog and Jordan’s King Hussein — all in Tokyo for the funeral of Emperor Hirohito — the natural deduction by the media was that Washington was getting into the Middle East act after all, so as not to leave the field wide open for Shevardnadze and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Soviet foreign minister, who continued his swing through the region with a rare audience with Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, has scheduled an early March meeting with Baker. The Middle East will plainly be high on the agenda.

There are also high-level contacts between each of the superpowers and the European Community, following a fact-finding mission to the Middle East by the foreign ministers of Spain, France and Greece.

Arens has spent time in London with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe, the British foreign secretary. Premier Yitzhak Shamir spent much of last week in Paris, and now the two Likud politicians and their aides are planning important visits to Washington.

On a parallel track — and, in the view of seasoned observers, no less dramatically significant — is the ongoing de-demonization of the PLO in Israeli public opinion.

The shift is happening faster than even the most optimistic doves could have hoped.

53 PERCENT FAVOR PLO TALKS

One much-publicized reflection was a poll that showed 53 percent of Israelis in favor of negotiations with the PLO.

Yet many of the people who say they would favor talks with the PLO say in the same breath that they expect such talks to lead nowhere, or that they personally oppose territorial concessions on the West Bank.

Many, perhaps most, Israelis still staunchly oppose the very notion of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Nevertheless, the change in attitude to the very notion of talking to the PLO is real and profound.

As a result, when left-wing politicians of Labor and various small opposition parties recently launched a series of meetings with PLO figures, such as Faisal Husseini and Bassam Abu Sharif, right-wing circles found it suddenly difficult to stir up a broad-based reaction of outrage.

The left, sensing a chink in the so-recently solid wall of mutual hatred between Israel and the PLO, has been pressing ahead.

Last week, the PLO’s No. 2 man, Abu Iyad, was prevailed upon to send a videotaped appeal to an international peace symposium convened in Jerusalem. His statements there were the PLO’s most unequivocal so far in favor of a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict.

NEWS CONFERENCE WITH PLO

Another psychological barrier tumbled at week’s end, when 11 Israeli journalists, in Cairo to cover the diplomatic meetings, attended a news conference held especially for the Israeli press by PLO leader Arafat.

Uri Porat, director general of the Israeli Broadcasting Authority, decreed that footage of this unprecedented event not be screened. But Haim Yevin, the popular director of TV, defied the order and showed viewers film of the news conference.

Whether this dynamic, and the parallel diplomatic one, will catalyze a peaceful political solution for Israelis and Palestinians is impossible to predict at this juncture.

The PLO itself is still notoriously splintered, unreliable and deeply unprepossessing from the Israeli standpoint.

The Soviets, too, have a very long record of obstructionism and hostility that cannot be wiped out merely by Shevardnadze’s smiles.

Israel’s key leaders, both in Likud and in Labor, are still committed to positions that would seem to preclude Israel-PLO negotiations resulting in massive Israeli concessions.

Nevertheless, given the extent of the changes that have already been wrought inside the USSR, in Soviet policy, in PLO theatric and in Israeli public attitudes, a breakthrough in efforts to reach a settlement of the Israeli-Arab conflict cannot be ruled out.