Occupying each other:

...At the same time, Palestinian and Israeli leaders have been pursuing, more or less, politics as usual...

...In short, Palestinian public opinion is hardly inclined towards the types of concessions peace with Israel requires...

...He is a member of the national advisory board of' 'American Friends of Peace Now,'' a support group for the Israeli peace movement...

...The PLO has long been expert at such squandering precisely because when it speaks the language of peace, it generally does so with so much ambiguity that it loses credibility...

...Thus, while moments of calm may briefly prevail again, the fury we've been witnessing is the face of the future...

...W hat Israelis see is this: words aimed at Westerners, bullets at Israelis, and then amazement and condemnation when Israel declines to take seriously PLO claims of moderation...

...For the Israelis, 1948 represents the victory of their own national liberation struggle over the enmity of the British...

...and then blamed for doing something about it...

...Irredentism has always been emblazoned on its banner, and even if security matters could be dealt with adequately, most of the Likud would still refuse to yield '' Judea and Samaria.'' Which in effect means that Shamir has nothing to offer in negotiations...

...When Arafat speaks to his own constituents, his words are rather less soothing than those he has for European and American journalists...

...The PLO joined Shamir in rejecting the Shultz initiative...

...From 1967 to 1987, Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza...

...Although Labor has both doves and hawks in its ranks, most of its leaders are now convinced that the status quo does not work to anyone's long-term advantage...

...In the West Bank, Fatah was still strongest but both Jihad and Habash's radical PFLP were gaining substantial ground...

...And the recent events have again highlighted a factor long at the heart of the conflict: each side sees the other as The Other, a menacing foe whose identity and rights can never be acknowledged lest the way down a slippery slope to self-destruction be opened...

...If the West Bank and Gaza remain unruly, Shamir will tell his followers to keep a stiff upper lip because the price of compromise is greater than maintaining the difficult status quo...

...Israel, in 1967, declared its willingness to trade territories for peace, and the Khartoum Summit Conference of the Arab League responded with its famous "three noes"-no peace, no recognition, no negotiations...

...If Israeli behavior is rooted in fear, that of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians is rooted in angry resentments...

...A total of 16.9 percent accepted an independent West Bank-Gaza state as a solution to the conflict, although 49.7 percent accepted it as an interim solution...

...Instead, the PLO has pulled old tricks out of its hat: a public relations stunt (trying to send a ship of Palestinians to Israel in a reenactment of the 1947 Exodus episode...

...Israel's founding generation-David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir-composed a charismatic and dynamic group of state building nationalists who, under extremely adverse circumstances, learned not only to be decisive and flexible, but how to communicate a persuasive sense of direction to their nation...

...But this is precisely what Arafat doesn't do...

...over the bitter hostility of and stubborn refusal to compromise by the Palestinians (whose leader, Haj Amin el-Husseini, had just spent World War II in Germany collaborating with Hitler...

...The problem goes even deeper...

...For Israelis, 1967 represents a war forced on them by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and an ensuing occupation they hadn't asked for in the first place...

...Should Israelis believe the PLO chief when he addresses his own constituents or when he speaks to Western journalists...

...Sadat's dramatic journey to Jerusalem and his unambiguous recognition of Israel's right to exist breached the psychological barriers...

...Ironically, it may end up that the best friends the Palestinians have is the Israeli peace movement...

...Hence the ironic symmetry in today's situation: the politics of national unity have precluded political initiative on both the Palestinian and the Israeli sides...

...If Arafat were actually inclined to move towards the Israelis in a significant way, he would have to chance wrecking this delicately reconstructed unity and risk undermining his own base...

...This long-told tale is one Israelis and Palestinians might bear in mind nowadays...

...Peres, Labor's chairman, took the initiative last year on behalf of an international peace conference, an idea recently promoted by U.S...

...It is a high price to pay and it is not at all certain that Arafat could sustain the support of his own Al Fatah colleagues...

...The uprising is, in the final analysis, the result of people seeing few, if any, acceptable future options...

...For the Palestinians and their sympathizers, Israel's creation in 1948 meant the defeat of Palestinian Arab nationalism and the birth of the still festering refugee problem...

...the latter were hardly needed to kindle discontent after twenty years of foreign dominance...

...MITCHELL COHEN is author of Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel (Blackwell) and associate professor of political science at the Graduate School and Baruch College of the City University of New York...

...For Israelis, it is obvious that an Arafat desirous of compromise would have long ago discarded such language, which is still pretty much a staple of PLO discourse...

...Demography alone makes it self-evident that permanent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza will undermine Israel's character as a state both democratic and Jewish...

...The living conditions in the camps are a true horror and, according to Meron Benvenisti, the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem who heads a project studying the occupied territories, Israelis or the Israeli government now control some 52 percent of West Bank and Gaza land...

...Even defense minister Yitzhak Rabin, who has presided over the Israeli army's heavy-handed actions in the occupied lands, has always declared himself in favor of territorial compromise...

...For now, Shamir has the advantage...

...quite to the contrary...

...Shamir opposes it on the grounds that such a framework would enable the Arabs, with Soviet and Chinese help, to impose a disadvantageous solution on Israel...

...All the more so if the Palestinians replace stones with bullets...

...The amphibian, knowing well the danger entailed, refused...

...since the Palestinian uprising began five months ago, Israelis and Palestinians are occupying each other...

...While Americans increasingly focus on the immediacy of the Palestinian tragedy, Israelis think historically in terms of two millennia of persecution of the Jews...

...But in his speech to the important PNC meeting last year in Algiers, Arafat declared that "this Palestinian land will remain Arab, Arab," that he was marching on "the road of Jihad" (holy war), that "the Palestinian rifle shall not be laid down until we reach Palestine, all Palestine...

...Yet, while "Peace Now" has organized impressive demonstrations against government policy, it still represents a minority (though a growing one, with increasing support among American Jews...

...On the peace issue, all Israel is divided into two parts...

...A population has now emerged in the West Bank and Gaza willing to challenge the Israelis as never before...

...What of the attitudes of the Palestinians in the territories...

...its current leaders tend to be technocrats- savvy, adaptable, but so far unable to seize on historical moments to articulate a clear and convincing message...

...The Palestinians have, for the first time, discovered effective means of resistance-rocks instead of bombs-and the relatively inexpensive costs Israel had been paying for the occupation since 1967 have escalated dramatically...

...When' 'Peace Now'' calls on the Israeli government to be forthcoming on the Palestinian question, the premier and his allies have a stock reply: "Where is the Palestinian 'Peace Now...

...The PLO has had a golden opportunity to reveal to the world-and to the Israelis-whether or not compromise is truly on its agenda...

...That is, unless a peace process begins in earnest...

...In it, 26.5 percent of the respondents advocated a political system based on the Sharia (Moslem Law) in a future Palestinian state, and 29.6 percent declared in favor of a state "based on Arab nationalism and Islam" (2.1 percent favored a state based solely on Arab nationalism...

...With the passing of its founders, Labor Zionism's charisma became routinized...

...be lost...

...His sense was that, in Gaza, "Jihad" (the Moslem Fundamentalists) was now equal in backing to Fatah, though this support was somewhat soft...

...In late January, I had a long conversation with a Palestinian friend, a political scientist with good access to the PLO, who had just returned from several weeks in Jerusalem, in the midst of the unrest...

...Add to this Arafat's unwillingness and/or inability to push his own organization and constituents decisively in new directions, and it seems probable that a real opportunity for easing the Palestinian plight will (once again...

...At the same time-and in apparent contradiction to the previous statistics-when asked their preferred solution to the conflict, 77.9 percent said ' 'a democratic Palestinian state in all of Palestine," as against a mere 1 percent in favor of linking the West Bank and Gaza to Jordan...

...The U. S. can commit itself to walk out with the Israelis should things take an ominous turn in another direction...

...Both Washington and Labor look primarily to Jordan or a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation as the chief negotiating partner in this context...

...The real key to understanding Israeli behavior is fear...

...To the latter he talks of a "democratic secular Palestine in which Jews, Moslems, and Christians can live together" or of a West Bank-Gaza state as solutions to the problem...

...In short, what Israel is faced with is the indigenous rebellion of an occupied people, not the handiwork of a few outside agitators...

...Consequently, most Israelis shed their previous opposition to the return of all Sinai to Egypt...

...And here, unfortunately, they have a point...

...As they both went under, the frog croaked out, "You knew that stinging me would doom us both, why did you do it...

...The obvious step was to call an urgent meeting of the PNC (the Palestinian National Council-its "parliament-in-exile") to launch a real peace effort...

...To speak of Israeli "policy," however, is to miss the point: the Israeli government is internally paralyzed and, consequently, has been using its army to enforce what can only be described as non-policy...

...murder (it hijacked and slaughtered civilians on a bus in the Negev...

...Anwar Sadat grasped this...

...20.7 percent justified placing bombs on civilian airliners (60.5 percent if it was an El Al plane...

...Secretary of State George Shultz...

...A sober analysis of the present situation-one that puts aside the furies of the moment for an understanding of the actual constellation of forces-reveals little place for optimism...

...But if everything seems to have changed for Palestinians under occupation, little seems to have changed for the PLO...

...For those living in the refugee camps, some 22.5 percent of West Bank and Gaza Arabs, there wasn't much to lose...

...the fact that the Arab states and the PLO have, for their own political purposes, long opposed dismantling the camps has little immediate relevance...

...But this is disingenuous: Peres and Shultz advocate an international conference which would be an umbrella for direct Arab-Israeli negotiations...

...But halfway across, the scorpion stung the frog...

...Not having initiated the revolt, it remains unable to take an intelligent initiative...

...A similar initiative is not in the offing from today's Palestinian leadership, something which suits Israeli rightists just fine...

...Except for a surprise turn of events, Israelis and Palestinians will, for the foreseeable future, continue to occupy and preoccupy each other, unhappy frogs and scorpions in a Middle Eastern caldron".scorpions in a Middle Eastern caldron...

...A new American president won't be settled into office and able to promote a peace process seriously until a year from now, and much can happen in the interim...

...On the other hand, 43.2 percent rejected such an interim in favor of continued struggle for a Palestinian state in all Palestine...

...When the Arabs cast their eyes back to 1967, they see yet another humiliating defeat at the hands of the Zionists, the beginning of two decades of occupation, and the threat of dispossession...

...What ought Arafat to do...

...What "democratic" means here is ambiguous since Western democratic systems received but 1.9 percent support and Soviet-style systems 6.7 percent...

...and over the invasion of five Arab armies under the auspices of the Arab League (whose Secretary General, Azzam Pasha, declared that there was to be' 'a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades"-words resonant in Jewish ears only three years after the Holocaust...

...The inconclusive 1984 Israeli national elections pressed the country's two major blocs-fierce foes since the 1920s-into a "national unity government" on the basis of the lowest common denominator they could muster...

...The other half-those aligned with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's rightist Likud bloc-stand adamantly opposed...

...Most Palestinians who have championed compromise either have been silenced by the bullets of Palestinian extremists, or found themselves with a small audience, if any audience at all...

...Today's exigency has been most vocally proclaimed by the non-parliamentary "Peace Now" movement, the foremost champions of Israeli-Palestinian compromise in the Zionist camp...

...He ought to address a consistent message of moderation to his own constituents and, just as importantly, directly and forthrightly to the Israeli peoplenot to the New York Times which, after all, is not party to the conflict...

...Half the ministers- those aligned with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres's Labor party-favor an international conference as an umbrella for direct negotiations on the territorial compromise needed to achieve peace with Israel's neighbors...

...With both Israeli and American election campaigns on the horizon, substantial diplomatic movement will be difficult...

...After due pause, the frog reconsidered...

...Only 8.3 percent felt diplomacy was to be the preferred means of pursuing Palestinian goals...

...It is striking, however, that what the Palestinians call the "Intifada" (the "Shaking" or "Shaking Off") has changed everything and nothing at once...

...He calculates that every act of Palestinian violence will prove his point for him, and make a Likud electoral victory more likely...

...As in the past, he is most likely to choose his organizational imperatives over the possibility of diplomatic breakthrough...

...The option of a " democratic secular state" received a mere 10.4 percent backing and a "democratic-Palestinian state" got 21.1 percent...

...These impressions are largely consistent with a recent study of West Bank and Gaza political attitudes conducted in the summer of 1986 (The Middle East Journal, Winter, 1988...

...Partly because of the lineup of forces within the PLO as a whole, and in his own Al Fatah, the dominant PLO group, in particular...

...But think it through," coaxed the scorpion...

...Labor will try to make peace the chief issue of the campaign, but in the recent past it has been unable to set the tone of public debate...

...Shamir is simply opposed to the "territory for peace" formula that serious bargaining implies...

...This is partly due to the nature of its leadership...

...However, Shamir represents the extreme right wing of Zionism, a force which was, in fact, marginalized throughout most of Zionist history, and took center stage for the first time only with Menachem Begin's electoral victory in 1977...

...The youngsters throwing rocks at Israeli troops have known nothing but Israeli occupation...

...Since the Likud's half can effectively block any Israeli initiative, the forces of conciliation are ensnared by the very existence of the "unity" (the word must be used advisedly here) government...

...A mere glance at the map and recollection of the events that led to the 1967 war demonstrate why: the West Bank and Gaza do raise the most serious questions for Israeli security...

...Given the enormous pressures of daily life in Israel, and the substantial sacrifices required of its citizens, this is of particular political importance...

...Israel must have elections by November, and current indications are that the voting will change little in the balance of political forces...

...or else it addresses itself to everyone save those with whom it must compromise-the Israelis...

...Unfortunately, the cards on both sides are stacked against it for now...

...and Yasir Arafat granted one of his now famous interviews with a Western journalist, in this case Anthony Lewis of the New York Times...

...The Algiers PNC meeting dramatically reunified Arafat with more extreme "rejectionist" elements, like George Habash's Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, under the PLO umbrella after years of dispute...

...Shamir and his backers often base their territorial arguments on military grounds...

...It would be irrational...

...Hanna Siniora-the moderate East Jerusalem editor who was once deemed acceptable by both the Israeli government and the PLO as a Palestinian representative in negotiations-had "no constituency whatsoever...

...Israel's policy of harsh and often brutal repression of Palestinian demonstrators has been subject to much criticism...

...Over a third, 36.9 percent, justified the massacres at the Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985...

...So into the waves they went...

...If I sting you, we'll both drown...

...Because this is the Middle East," was the gurgling reply...

...So the rub is this: while the Jewish state has the strongest military force in the region, no amount of Israeli power will allay Israeli fears that they might wind up again as they did in May 1967, surrounded, threatened, isolated...