The Middle East peace process is looking increasingly imperilled following Hamas's latest terrorist atrocity in Tel Aviv last Friday and continuing protests by Palestinians against Israel's decision to proceed with a massive housing development in east Jerusalem. Arguments have raged over the Israeli prime minister's claim that Mr Yasser Arafat gave a green light to Hamas to go ahead with the suicide bombing and on whether the suicide bombing which killed four people and injured 40 was provoked by the Israeli housing decision. They raise the question of whether the peace process is capable of being put back on track, given the increasingly polarised attitudes among its main participants.
The housing development is an undoubted provocation to the Palestinians. It flies in the face of their understanding that the Oslo accords were based on exchanging land for peace and on some kind of joint sovereignty over Jerusalem. The Har Homas development is being built on Jewish-owned land near Bethlehem and will consolidate the large scale building programme already a reality on the ground in the eastern part of the city. Given that the future of Jerusalem is a central matter for negotiations under the Oslo accord, the universal feeling among Palestinians is that this housing programme pre-empts them and is intended to signal that they will stop well short of a Palestinian state with its capital in the eastern part of the city.
Such too has been the conclusion drawn by all the major international players in the peace process, including the United States and the European Union. But so far they have not put maximum pressure on Israel to pull back from the Har Homa development. They have been understandably constrained by the Tel Aviv atrocity and by fears that misjudgments have been made in response to it. Suggestions yesterday that Mr Dennis Ross, the US mediator, will shortly begin another round of talks and that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Arafat might meet in the near future have not been confirmed; but at the very least such initiatives will be required if this latest crisis is to be defused.
Some of Mr Arafat's closest lieutenants have been outspoken about the Har Homa development and despairing about what it reveals of Mr Netanyahu's intentions. They are most aware of the added precariousness of Mr Arafat's position, in the eyes of Palestinian public opinion, following such preemptive Israeli action. Some of Mr Netanyahu's lieutenants have been speaking about Mr Arafat as if he was obliged to deploy his security forces as a client militia of Israel rather than as the embryonic backbone of a Palestinian state. This ambiguity was implicit in the Oslo accords, but was resolved there by the establishment of unprecedented trust between those who reached them. It will not be further resolved by such precipitate action by Mr Netanyahu, nor by the failure of Mr Arafat's forces to deal promptly and decisively with terrorism.
These latest events pose the most serious questions as to whether the Middle East peace process is sustainable. Before it dies the international community, as well as the parties directly involved, should make a comprehensive effort to revive it. The best means of doing so would be for the Israeli government to call a halt to the Har Homa development.