Road map to remote destination

After last week's drama at the Red Sea summit meetings, those who still have the patience even to think about the problems of Israelis and Palestinians may well be wondering: Is peace about to break out?

The answer, I'm afraid, is probably not. This is not to say that important things didn't happen in the weeks leading up to Sharm el Sheikh and Aqaba, and at the meetings themselves. The Palestinians have a leader in Mahmoud Abbas, who clearly seems to recognize that nearly three years of terror have only hurt their cause. And he appears sincere in his attempt to bring about an end to an intifada of violence. Ariel Sharon, too, has come a great distance since his January reelection. One of Israel's most indefatigable warriors has begun using terms never before heard from him, speaking of the need to end the "occupation," to "divide" the land of Israel, and to ensure that the emerging Palestinian state has "territorial contiguity."

It is likely that none of this would have happened had not President Bush taken the leap and become personally involved in trying to facilitate a settlement. That, too, was a change of tack for which he deserves considerable credit.

Why, then, the pessimism? I'll put aside, for the moment, the severe doubts any Israeli must have about the Palestinian prime minister's ability to impose a cease-fire on organizations like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, or even whether Abu Mazen, as Mr. Abbas is known, has the support of a majority of his people. I will assume, too, that Mr. Bush is in this to the bitter end, and will keep the pressure up on both sides.

I'll even grant that Mr. Sharon appears to be serious in his declarations. Unfortunately, though, the reality he helped create in the West Bank and Gaza during the past 3-1/2 decades is almost sure to foil the prime minister in his mission to disentangle Israel from the Palestinians.

In his statement at the Aqaba meeting, Sharon promised the immediate dismantlement of "illegal" outposts. The distinction between "legal" and "illegal" settlements is an Israeli one, as most international jurists believe that all Israeli settlement activity in the territories violates the Fourth Geneva Convention. (Every US administration, too, since 1967, has opposed settlement activity, in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.) When the prime minister speaks of illegal outposts, he means communities, in most cases tiny, improvised ones, established without proper administrative approval.

At the end of May, I toured several of the illegal settlements, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank. My guide was Dror Etkes, who tracks the growth and spread of Jewish communities in the territories for the Peace Now movement.

Few Israelis have spent time in the West Bank, unless it has been during Army service. They know little firsthand about conditions under which Palestinians live (since the intifada began, they're not even permitted in the areas under Palestinian control), and not much more about the settlement enterprise, which has been undertaken with stealth.

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