Middle Ground Shrinks Extremists Seem Mainstream As Mideast Peace Talks Begin

For those with hope that the meeting today between President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington will revive Middle East peace, it may be wise to hear the words of a prominent preacher at Palestine Mosque’s prayers last week:

“Peace is dead. The whole peace process is dead,” said Wajih Yaghi, also an elected member of the Palestinian Council. “If Israeli tanks are ready to come back here, I say if they want, try, try, and the uprising will begin again. The land will be on fire, and we shall burn Netanyahu with our stones.”

And it may be wise to listen to Meir Indor, one of Israel’s leading grassroots, right-wing organizers:

“We are the last wall against terrorism in the world. We were the best school for fighting terrorism, but now we’re the best school for giving up to terrorism. In the end, all those people who want so much peace will bring war so, so fast.”

The lesson here: Even as Clinton brings to play all the influence of the world’s only superpower on a peace process involving two peoples on a tiny strip of land, the process remains extremely vulnerable to the extremes - in Israel, Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect of the trouble in the Middle East is that the extremists - especially on the Palestinian side - are not so far from mainstream thought these days.

In a poll published Sunday, the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion asked 470 adults directly if they supported the March 21 suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed three women. The answer: 49 percent said yes. The poll’s margin of error was 3.5 percent.

The current crisis grew out of the Israeli decision to build a neighborhood for 30,000 Jews on the southern fringes of Jerusalem - land the Palestinians had hoped would be part of their future capital someday.

At the meeting today, diplomats say Clinton will press the Israeli leader to halt all building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. It is much less clear whether the president will exert tough pressure on halting the Jerusalem project.

Netanyahu has said firmly that he won’t stop the construction. He is demanding that the Palestinians crack down on terror groups before peace talks can begin.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has told Clinton in a letter that Israel must pledge to stop construction on the land before talks can begin.

It is an impasse that seems impossible to bridge, unless one leader backs down - and that’s not only the opinion of extremists.

Shimon Peres, the former prime minister, warned late last week that without new talks the country was headed toward war.