Back to the table

摘要

Good luck to them. Against a background stained with blood, and with their hopes at or below ground-level, Israelis and Palestinians are endeavouring yet again to forge a permanent agreement. Senior officials from both sides are in Washington, talking to American mediators, probably to each other as well. A summit between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat is in the air. Can they, against the odds, pull off a miracle? Perhaps, but only if both sides have the good faith to do so. As it is, only the Israeli delegates, albeit for compelling domestic reasons, are ready to negotiate earnestly. With a political mess behind them (see page 55), they are driven by two deadlines: Bill Clinton's departure on January 2oth and their own prime-ministerial election on February 6th. And they are serving an Israeli public that, however shaken it may be by the violence of the intifada, still craves a deal to bring the whole business to an end. The Palestinian delegates, by contrast, are acting coyly, implying that they are there only because they were invited. The public they serve has been savagely scarred by 12 weeks of physical and economic punishment—nearly 300 people killed, villages and towns blockaded, farmland ripped up—and is loth to help Mr Barak, the man behind this punishment, to stay in power.