Beyond Sharon and Arafat

ISRAELI NOVELIST AMOS Oz had it right in his March 12 New York Times op-ed piece when he commented on the murder of a nine-month-old Israeli baby girl by a group of Palestinian gunmen and the killing of a Palestinian baby girl by an Israeli bomb.

"They are dying not because there is no way of resolving the crisis, but, on the contrary, they are dying precisely because a way exists and is known very well by all," he wrote.

"Every Israeli in the street knows what the solution is, just as every Palestinian knows it. Even Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat know the solution: peace between two states, established by the partition of the land roughly in accordance with demographic realities based on Israel's pre-l967 borders."

President George W. Bush's policy of letting the two old warriors slug it out has been tragically deficient. Even when Bush did a belated but welcome policy U-turn on April 4 and appealed to Sharon to end his incursions "without delay," Bush did not use the two key words "or else" and put in no specifics and no demand for a timetable for withdrawal. Sharon picked up on the message as a yellow light and kept up his offensive of blood and iron, even though the arrival of Bush's special representative, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Israel was imminent.

It was a moment of Sharonist arrogance, recalling his catastrophic invasion of Lebanon, and underscored the necessity for Bush to put aside his misbegotten saber rattling at Saddam Hussein and make the settling of this conflict his main priority in the Middle East.

Bush must encourage Powell, the most visible "dove" of his administration, to negotiate or impose a cease-fire. And Bush must then use the leverage and influence of the United States to work unceasingly toward the only antiterrorism policy that will work short and long term: two sovereign states, with secure borders, cemented by a peace plan that is endorsed by the United Nations, with U.N. and international peacekeeping forces in place as long as necessary.

As Oz eloquently concluded, "One day when the peace treaty is achieved, and the Palestinian ambassador presents his credentials to the president of Israel in the Western section of Jerusalem, while the Israeli ambassador presents his to the Palestinian president in East Jerusalem, we shall all have to laugh at the stupidities of our past. Even as we laugh, we shall have to answer for the spilling of so much innocent blood. But the mothers and fathers of the dead will not be laughing."