A dangerous new phase of violence is looming in the Mideast. And while Israeli and Palestinian leaders appear locked in reflexive habits, Palestinian factions attack each other in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas ponders a renewal of suicide attacks on Israel after seven picnickers were killed on a Gaza beach, and senior Israeli officials debate a large-scale air campaign against targets in Gaza.
What makes the current situation particularly perilous is that a dynamic seems to be developing in which the underlying nature of the conflict is increasingly ignored, and leaders go on repeating the same behavior that engendered the impending disaster.
The first priority for both sides should be to preserve the cease-fire of the past year and a half. It is not enough for Israeli officials to express regret for any harm done to ``uninvolved' Palestinians on the Gaza beach or to investigate the exact causes of that tragedy. Even if the victims were killed accidentally or by buried explosives stored nearby, the longstanding Israeli policy of firing artillery into one of the world's most densely populated areas is a formula for more calamities.
It is in Israel's interest to preserve the calm of the cease-fire and to help prevent a complete collapse of the Palestinian Authority. If there is to be any hope that Hamas will take a turn toward pragmatism, Israeli policy will have to place a priority on not further antagonizing the nearly 4 million Palestinians living under occupation. Palestinian public opinion, after all, is the one force most capable of inducing Hamas to abandon its doctrinal rejection of a two-state solution.
Top Hamas leaders living in Syria are calling for renewed suicide bombings in Israel. This would lead to disastrous suffering for both peoples, and some Hamas figures in Gaza have publicly acknowledged as much. The international community, and Arab governments in particular, should exert the greatest possible influence on Hamas not to doom the region to the catastrophes that will ineluctably follow from a new round of suicide bombings.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has declared he will hold a referendum on negotiating a two-state solution with Israel, should seize the moment to warn Hamas in public that it will be to blame for the consequences of renewed suicide bombings. In the same vein, he should call on Israel not to provoke such a catastrophe by launching large-scale attacks in Gaza.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders are teetering on the edge of an abyss because they have not produced the negotiated two-state peace agreement large majorities of both peoples want and need. The longer they refuse to do so, the more dangerous and difficult to resolve their conflict becomes.