Summit antagonism leaves Middle East on a powder keg

WHERE they stood, outside the White House, after two bays of marathon negotiations at which they had reached agreement on almost nothing. They had sat in silence, side by side, their faces grave, their eyes sullenly downward, while Clinton told the world he dare not let them loose at the microphones for fear that they would let slip something that might trigger a new and deeper bout of mutual antagonism.

As Clinton chattered on, desperate to put a positive spin on a disappointment he knew his Republican presidential opponent would try to seize upon, watching Israelis and Palestinians could almost hear the cracking of the next, seemingly inevitable round of gunfire.

But now, with the limousines about to roll up, as the time came to bid their farewells, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat suddenly turned to one another, smiled broadly, and clasped each other's hands in a gesture of utterly incongruous warmth and mutual trust.

As preparations get under way for Sunday's start of the intensive, continuous negotiations to which Israeli and the Palestinians committed themselves at President Clinton's crisis summit, that brief, unexpected gesture of partnership constitutes just about the only glimmer of light among the dark clouds now gathering in the Middle East.

Mr Netanyahu and Mr Arafat knew full well how high were the stakes in Washington - yet all they could manage was to buy a little time. A few days of mayhem last week cost the lives of some 60 Palestinians and 15 Israelis - but that level of casualties is bound to be marginal compared to the widespread death and destruction likely to erupt here if they cannot salvage their accord.

The Hamas extremists who have always sought to destroy peace hopes could stage an anti Israel suicide bombing and torpedo Sunday's talks before they even begin. Today's prayers on Temple Mount represent another violent confrontation in the making. Hebron is like a powder keg, its Palestinians kept under curfew in their homes for day after day. Gaza and the other West Bank cities are seething with frustrated Palestinian youths, conflict, Palestinian policemen and nervous Israeli soldiers.

Mr Netanyahu is being treated like a hero by his right wing supporters in Israel - the man who looked the leader of the free in the eye and didn't blink; didn't agree to close that cursed Jerusalem tunnel: didn't consent to a fixed timetable for a Hebron withdrawal didn't announce an end to the closure of borders; didn't order tanks to pull back from the out skirts of Mr Arafat's territory.

And from his performance at the solo press conference in Washington, he clearly feels that the praise is well deserved. His aim at the summit, he declared confidently, had been to establish the principle that the Palestinians would not be allowed to benefit from last week's resort to violence. He remained committed to the Hebron pull out, he insisted, but implementation could only be discussed in a climate of good faith and calm.

Many of the Prime Minister's most ardent supporters do not believe that last part, that bit about his being committed to leaving most of Hebron. They think, and hope, that it is just a public relations exercise, that Mr Netanyahu has no intention whatsoever of ordering the redeployment. They note happily that he may not even have a majority at his own cabinet table for pulling the soldiers out.

But Mr Netanyahu is not that devious, and dare not be. And he would not have smiled that smile, shaken hands the way he did, and then spoken so enthusiastically about his new relationship with Mr Arafat if he were planning to double cross him next week. Mr Arafat, too, must have known he was shaking hands on something substantial.

THE Prime Minister always opposed the presumed end result of the Oslo process - independent Palestinian statehood - but, equally, he always essentially favoured some of the interim steps, including the granting of firmly limited Palestinian self rule in highly limited Palestinian population centres in the West Bank and Gaza. He is prepared to pull out of Hebron, provided he can mollify his own camp by pointing to various security "modifications" - however spurious. He does recognise that the previous Labour government's signature on the agreements is binding on his government.

So if - and that's a sizeable if - Mr Arafat can keep the lid on Palestinian anger long enough to finalise the Hebron arrangements, most of Hebron could yet see the back of most of the Israeli troops. That's the good news.

The bad news is that few of even the most pessimistic analysts here had expected this process to break down before the Hebron pull out. Last week's gun battles shattered the framework earlier than the gravest doom merchants had predicted. The anticipated collapse was after Hebron, when Mr Netanyahu would make it clear to Mr Arafat that he had given all he was going to give, that the Palestinians would have to be satisfied with their disconnected West Bank enclaves.

Mr Netanyahu would have us believe that he and Mr Arafat are now beginning a beautiful friendship. But even if an unlikely new era of trust can somehow enable Israel and the Palestinians to surmount the Hebron hurdle, the Middle East is living on borrowed time.

Israel and the Palestinians have two leaders with acutely conflicting visions of the final formula for dividing their contested land - as they make clear whenever they address their own supporters. No wonder President Clinton kept them away from the microphones. No wonder he acknowledged that the crisis in the Middle East has not been defused.