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A hardier hope

Are we witnessing a historic opportunity for peace in Israel?

Date published: 12/6/2005

A hardier hope

Israel's new party and Middle East peace

THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CONFLICT can be summed up in one word that both sides of the world's bitterest divide might agree on: intractable. Since time out of mind, battles physical and spiritual have raged over who most deserves the rocky, hot, inhospitable desert land so integral to the faiths of Jews, Muslims, and (oft forgotten amid the modern turbulence) Christians. Like a flower planted in the sand, peace seems unable to take root.

Hope, ever resurgent in the form of various leaders and agreements, too often has been shot down--often literally. Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin, and other less-than-intransigent politicians have fallen victim to the bullets of fanatics to whom the word "compromise" is anathema. Yet hope is a core human characteristic, and it has returned to the Middle East in recent days.

It is with hope that the world watches Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon leave his own hard-line party, Likud, to form a new party dedicated to strength, reason--and a real country for the Palestinians. That hope grew with the news that Mr. Sharon's longtime nemesis, Shimon Peres, is quitting his left-leaning Labour party and joining Mr. Sharon's new centrist group.

The name of the new party is Kadima--meaning "forward" in Hebrew. Indeed, despite the ages of the two men (Sharon is 77, Peres 82), Israelis seem to want to move forward with them: Kadima is out the gate with a bang, far outpacing both Labour and Likud in early opinion polls. The Israeli public, it seems, has had enough of the intractable.

What does all this mean? The most optimistic answer: peace for Israel. That will require Israel's withdrawal from several Jewish settlements in the chaotic West Bank, something Mr. Sharon's new party has promised to see to. The political ferment in Israel also may mean a nation, at last, for the long-impoverished and poorly led Palestinians.

Israeli politics often seem grounded in quicksand. Other parties have come and gone--and in a parliamentary system requiring coalitions to hold power, one small, obstinate faction has sometimes wilted the promise of peace. The veteran leadership of both Messrs. Sharon and Peres will be needed to overcome such hurdles.

In the convoluted history of Israel since its founding in 1948, however, these two just might be the ones to do it. To understand the epic nature of a new party headed by the pair, Americans might try to imagine George W. Bush and Bill Clinton leaving their respective political affiliations and starting out together along a new, shared path. Leading lights of right and left united in the middle--who knows what they could accomplish?

In the end, the Israelis and Palestinians have no choice. For obduracy has failed both sides. Mr. Sharon is doing his part; will the nascent Palestinian leadership seize this chance for peace? With the rediscovery of "forward" thinking, perhaps "intractable" need no longer be the keyword in the Arab-Israeli saga.

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Date published: 12/6/2005