Netanyahu’s Metamorphosis

Benjamin Netanyahu promised repeatedly as he was campaigning last spring to become Israel’s prime minister that he would never meet with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whom he excoriated as a bloody-handed terrorist. This week Netanyahu and Arafat met and resolved to go forward with a peace process that had stalled and appeared threatened with collapse.

If their brief meeting was less than warm, it at least was businesslike. If no resolution of major issues was even attempted, an important psychological boundary nevertheless was crossed. Netanyahu the ideological campaigner appears to have given way to Netanyahu the pragmatic statesman, a metamorphosis to be welcomed.

Many in the governing right-wing coalition he heads refuse to herald him in that role. Of course, within his own Likud Party Netanyahu is being condemned for selling out, most notably by such habitual hawks--and leading rivals--as Ariel Sharon and Benny Begin. It’s far too early to conclude that Netanyahu has been converted to making the peace process succeed in the only way it can, by both sides accepting the need to abandon their maximum goals and achieve realistic compromises. It’s too early even to conclude that Netanyahu has a clear idea of how he intends to achieve the model of a peace settlement that he now promises. Still, he has recognized that Israel has entered into a solemn commitment to negotiate peace with the Palestinians and that Arafat is the leader who must be negotiated with. And so the process has resumed.

Secret meetings have already set the agenda for the next round of talks, which will include the conditions under which the Israeli army will be withdrawn from the West Bank city of Hebron and readmission of Palestinian workers into Israel. But resumed negotiations also invite renewed peril. Palestinian extremists, whose atrocities against Israelis earlier this year did much to cost the previous government its chance for reelection, may again seek to sabotage the talks with fresh outrages. Both sides should be alert to that threat, and to any others that opponents of the peace process--Arab or Israeli--might devise.