Last chance for peace?

Arafat and Barak: Opening Pandora's box?

By BBC News Online's Martin Asser

Camp David II could end with a stunning success - or it might signal the start of a bloody unravelling of the modest achievements of seven years of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Nor can it be assumed that President Clinton would not have called Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat together without the certainty of success - his abject failure at the Geneva summit with Syria's late President Assad proves that.

Camp David, 1978: Egypt secured a return of all its Israeli-occupied land

In fact it looks more like the last throw of the dice from a US president, desperate in his twilight months to secure an elusive Middle East peace deal.

The Israeli leader needs it too, having failed to deliver promises of peace he made a year ago, and with a coalition tottering on the brink of collapse.

Meanwhile, the man who has embodied the Palestinian cause since the 1960s will head for Maryland hoping against hope he will not have to consign his people's fundamental aspirations to the dustbin of history.

Framework

The sheer uncertainty of what lies ahead has left diplomats and observers gasping. Is it phenomenal courage, or massive self-delusion, that is driving these men?

Palestinians in Jerusalem are being asked to accept Israeli sovereignty

The years of negotiations have brought small, but tangible, benefits - principally, partial self-rule for the Palestinians and Arab recognition of Israel's right to exist on what was once Palestine.

But the obstacles that have been overcome are nothing compared to those on the way to a permanent settlement.

In Israeli and American eyes, and they hold most of the winning cards in this game of poker, the framework for a final deal could look like this:

• Palestinians get a state in Gaza and 90% of the West Bank
• Israel keeps sovereignty over Jerusalem including the occupied Arab areas
• A token Palestinian presence may be permitted in the city
• Palestinian refugees will lose the right of return to homes in what is now Israel
• Some "family reunification" for refugees and rights to settle in the newly-drawn Palestine

It might look simple on paper, but it is potentially devastating for the authority of both the Israel and Palestinian leaderships.

Good-bye Mr Palestine

To agree to this formula, Mr Arafat would be the first Arab leader to renounce a claim to land captured by Israel in 1967.

Arafat is under pressure from all sides

He would also be tearing up United Nations Resolution 194, which explicitly backs the return of refugees to their homes, and Resolution 242, which tells Israel to withdraw from territory it has acquired by war.

The Americans and Israelis say the Palestinians have a choice. To back down on issues which the international consensus has supported them for 50 years, for the sake of a better future for all, or to miss the opportunity for peace.

But the Palestinian leadership's legitimacy has already been battered by the years of half-empty deals, and the authoritarian self-rule that those deals have brought.

Crossing the Palestinian "red lines" of Jerusalem, refugees and a return to 1967 borders, could therefore prove fatal to Mr Arafat's leadership.

Barak's red lines

Mr Barak too faces hard decisions. His red lines may have been drawn unilaterally by Israel, but they have formed the basis of Israeli political and strategic thinking since the 1967 war.

Barak could be just the man to clinch a peace deal

Only in the Palestinians' dreams would he allow back the millions of refugees or hand over half of Jerusalem.

But handing over "Jewish" land to the Gentiles is explosive enough, as his assassinated predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, found out.

Even without a violent backlash, Mr Barak would probably only be able to ratify such a deal with the leftist, secular, and Arab rump which is all that remains of the broadly-based cabinet coalition, with secular and Arab allies, that he had when he entered office.

He might be the only man who could sell such a deal to the Israeli people.

But he might also have to call another election to confirm his mandate. And his wouldn't be the first administration to be torn to pieces in the bear-pit of Israeli politics.

So President Clinton was speaking accurately when he said there was no guarantee of success at Camp David.

And yet... and yet if there is the chance of peace, a peace that would touch millions of souls in a region that has been dogged by conflict for so long, perhaps it is worth showing up in Maryland.

We should wish them good luck. They will need it.