The Conflict Will Never End, But the Violence Might

There is one truth about Israelis and Palestinians which holds out some hope for the future. It is that complete separation is a myth, and that even when there are two states - if that should come about - Israeli and Palestinian politics will penetrate one another, permanently and probably increasingly. The real issue, raised again as President Bush for the first time fully commits himself to a scheme to achieve peace, is on what terms will they live together - bad or good, equal or unequal?

At this most basic level, there is a strange understanding between men like Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister. They do all see the Holy Land as one place. Sharon, of course, is interested above all in dominance. A straightforward Greater Israel would be preferable, but there are more ways than one to skin a cat. A hybrid, in which the Palestinians have the form of a state but the Israelis prevail on all important issues, could also be acceptable, especially if the Palestinian rulers prevent all or most attacks on Israel. The Palestinians, extremists aside, are also interested in a hybrid situation, in which they have substantial control over their own state while exercising significant influence over the Israeli state through its large Palestinian minority. That is a minority, it is to be remembered, whose votes can be critical in Israel.

In other words, at the end of the road which the Bush administration hopes will lead to peace is a situation in which the Palestinian state would be penetrated by Israeli power and the Israeli state penetrated by Palestinian power. Different forms of power, but power and penetration nevertheless. The question is the degree of penetration, which is why two things have such fundamental importance. The more complete a Palestinian state is in its attributes, the less will be the Israeli penetration, although still considerable. On the other hand, if the Israelis give even a little on the right of return, that would increase the countervailing Palestinian penetration into Israel. It would do this through the demographic reinforcement of the Palestinian minority and, even more, through its symbolic impact on the concept of a Jewish state.

Whatever way such matters might be settled, it would not be a stable situation, for the struggle between the two peoples, intermingled with co-operation and collaboration, would inevitably continue after an agreement which brought a Palestinian state into being. Indeed the whole point is precisely that the relationship can neither be ended nor frozen. Even "transfer", driving out the Palestinians, would not end it.

Difficult though a next chapter based on a two-state agreement would be, it is a better prospect than continued war and chaos, and most on both sides know it. Thus it is probably true that Ariel Sharon has "changed his mind", and no longer wishes to stave off a Palestinian state for ever, but merely to handicap it at birth. He told his party conference some months ago there was no military solution to the conflict and no way of repairing the Israeli economy without a political settlement. After the Iraq war, he also knows it would be foolish to oppose the Americans, convinced now that they have to do something about the conflict. Sharon's mind may even have changed to a point which he regards as extreme by his own standards, and which makes him ready to use such words as "occupation" and to talk repeatedly of withdrawing from some settlements.

But never imagine that Sharon will move a millimetre, unless pushed hard, from the position that real power in the Holy Land belongs exclusively to Israelis, nor that he will easily give up the older objectives of as much territorial control as he can get away with. Even now, his so-called security fence is carving out territory beyond the green line which he presumably hopes he can represent, somehow, as being on the Israeli "side" in any future negotiations.

Those negotiations will soon start in earnest. Bush's summit with Abbas and Sharon early next month, and his meeting with Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian leaders, will set the seal on that. For the first time since Clinton's last days, America is engaged. The objectives, however, are unclear and in contention within an administration which contains strongly placed friends of Likud. The old quarrel over whether the moves made by both sides should be simultaneous or sequential - code for Israel getting improvements in security before it makes any concessions - has already revived, even though the road map was designed by American, Russian, European and UN diplomats to avoid such clashes.

If the peace process were a school year, the Israeli concern is with exams for the Palestinians which they propose to set and mark themselves, while the Palestinians want, first of all, an assurance that they will graduate and, second, a timetable not subject to rearrangement. Yet the relentless pursuit of advantage by the Israelis in negotiations is likely to be counter- productive if it undermines Abbas, gives the wrong kind of opportunities to an alienated and angry Arafat, or pushes Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the wrong direction.

Palestinian politics have been greatly changed by the combination of Israeli policy under Sharon and the Iraq war. Arafat has been pushed aside but retains much power, including control over some of the many Palestinian security forces. Younger leaders in all factions, but especially Fatah, brought to popular prominence by the intifada, are now looking for formal positions commensurate with their role in the resistance against the Israelis.

According to the Palestinian analyst Khalil Shikaki, quoted recently in the magazine Middle East International, they are the potential tactical allies of Abbas. Operating within the context of a popular mood which responds to those who have fought the Israelis but at the same time want an end to the fighting, they have an interest in elections which could raise them and legitimise them as politicians. The complication is that elections might also strengthen Arafat. The struggle for the succession to Arafat and the struggle between the secular and the Islamist groupings are now going on simultaneously.

Mahmoud Abbas, who is himself the succession to Arafat only in a partial and very possibly temporary sense, is at the centre, and perhaps also at the mercy, of these intricate developments. Negotiating in these circumstances demands a style far removed from the usual Israeli approach under Sharon. It requires a style which balances the need to strengthen opponents who are also needed as partners against the maximal objectives of one's own side. Can the Bush administration transcend its obsessions and its prejudices in order to transform Israeli-Palestinian politics, which will never be free of conflict but which could still be largely freed of violence? At least, if very belatedly, it has made a start.