Editorials

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Advancing Through Failure

IN FOCUS

F'

or all the talk —and there certainly was enough talk over the last sev-
eral months — this week's summit meeting sort of caught us unaware.
Sure, if you were a Mideast maven, you knew that something big
might be coming out of all those quiet conversations in Stockholm
and Gaza City. But for
ordinary folks, particular-
ly American Jews who are
inured to the endless
rounds of bluster that
don't quite resolve any-
thing, it was pretty hard
to believe that Ehud
Barak and Yasser Arafat
would actually be talking
in each other's cabin at
the Catoctin Mountains
hideaway that spawned
the first Camp David
accord, with Egypt, two
decades ago.
When they got there
last week, we felt like the
Israeli public when they
suddenly realized that, by
golly, Barak had actually
lived up to a campaign
promise and gotten the
troops out of southern
Lebanon. And we were
left wondering how that
happened and what's up
next.
Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak were playful early in
As of Wednesday mid-
the talks.
day — when this paper
has to be shipped off to
our printers so you can read it Friday afternoon and check the weekend calendar
for community events — we didn't know what announcement would be coming
from President Bill Clinton, Barak and Arafat. Both Barak and Arafat had sepa-
rately leaked word that they were breaking off talks and going home, while Clin-
ton put off a heavy-duty economic trip to try to persuade them to stay on. As
we said a couple of weeks ago, we hope for the best and prepare ourselves for
something less than that.
Whatever the outcome, Israelis, Palestinians and Americans
are in for a new set of very hard lessons about some agonizing
sacrifices that are going to be needed to achieve a lasting
peace. It has become increasingly clear that neither side has
done an adequate job of preparing its constituencies for the
political, economic and emotional costs they will have to pay.
The Palestinian Authority and its extremist supporters have
done the least. At a time when their leaders know that they
cannot have unfettered authority over key parts of Jerusalem,
they continue an absolutist rhetoric that inflames rather than
quiets the emotions of Muslims everywhere. And at a time
when they know that security is uppermost on the minds of
Israelis, they continue to allow antisemitic rant in their school
books and threaten to revive the painful but ultimately useless
Intifada, the uprising that makes Israelis least willing to believe
they can live at peace with ordinary Palestinians.
Israeli leaders have been a good bit better about demonstrating a potential
willingness to trust the PA and to accept a Palestinian state with defined borders,
provided it is demilitarized. They have come up with a creative if unappetizing
approach to giving Arafat the semblance of a capital in east Jerusalem.
But, as the mass demonstration in Tel Aviv on Sunday showed, huge numbers
of Israelis have yet to join in a national consensus on peace. And the only way to

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Historical Retrospective

Rabbi Sherwin Wine of Birmingham Temple in Farmington Hills was the guest
speaker at the Jewish Historical Society of
annual meeting June 25 at
Congregation B'nai Moshe in West Bloomfield. He spoke about the history of
Detroit Jewry.

bring them aboard is through a more open discussion of the real exchanges that
were being discussed at Camp David.
Barak, borrowing a page from Menachem Begin's successful 1978 negotia-
tions for peace with Egypt, avoided publicly detailing what tradeoffs he would
make, assuming correctly that his tattered coalition would simply order him not
to make those trades. But keeping quiet means no opportunity to rally peace
supporters behind any well-understood quid pro quo.
Clinton, while obviously both a friend of Israel and an
ardent seeker of Mideast peace, also has not shown that he
understands what Americans need to learn if they are going to
back up a peace deal with tens of billions of
in aid —
much of it to the Palestinians. Even many well-informed
American Jewish leaders are not ready to support a deal and
many ordinary Jews, like most other Americans, seem not to
want to learn the details.
If, as seems likely, this summit does not finish with a signable
pact, it will have brought into a very public spotlight the core
concerns of both sides. So it will have set the stage for a public
discussion — among Israelis, Palestinians and Americ.ans — of
the ultimate tradeoffs that will have to take place. All of us will
understand what settlements will be preserved and which let go,
where Palestinians can expect to live within Israel and, hardest of
all, what parts of Jerusalem will have to be ruled by whom.
It will be disappointing if Barak and Arafat go home with nothing material to
show for their time in the mountains. But if the exercise sets in motion a process of
broad public education, it can be counted a modest and necessary forward step
toward the deal that will eventually bring a more permanent peace to the Mideast. ❑

At the least,
a public
spotlight
on the
core concerns.

See cover story, page 6

