No sticks, no aspirins:

...Second, because imposed solutions rarely resolve conflicts...

...But the days of attempted American coercion, or uncritical support, should pass.t, should pass...

...should pay large costs to underwrite the Lavi fighter...

...The reasons for fear are obvious enough...

...the hope stems from a sense that the Israeli political system itself is so sharply and permanently divided as to be incapable of pursuing any policy-whether tough or conciliatory-other than continuing to muddle along in an increasingly costly and unpromising manner...

...An American president faces too many competing demands on his attention to want or be able to repeat the Carter experience...

...If the American government decides this policy is in the interest of the United States, then it should support it...

...In the latter case, withdrawal of some overt and virtually open-ended supports for Israeli policy would not constitute "pressuring" Israel, but merely a changed view of America's own national interest...

...The United States may also be able to serve as an honest broker suggesting other instruments that will satisfy some interests of the Palestinians and of the Israelis...

...Lord Palmerston's axiom that nation states have no permanent friends or enemies, only interests, is too glib, at least for democracies...

...Every possible step carries great risks, and it is an intensely personal decision, to be made by the individuals who will take them, to decide how serious they think the various risks are-and more important, which risks and costs are worth incurring...

...A stable peace cannot be reached by negotiating with "representatives" who are regarded either as traitorous puppets or as terrorists enforcing a hard line on their own people...

...In particular, no Christian American, not immediately sharing the experience of Jewish history, should presume to say what risks Israelis should run...

...now be supplying aspirins to relieve the pain...

...and the image of a strategic asset with the decline of the cold war...

...Some Israelis hope that the mutual pain suffered in the intifada will eventually drive both sides to accept a settlement...

...What an American president can and must do is to look clearly at the national balance sheet of costs and gains from continuing the present degree of involvement...

...Nor would any of the costs be completely eliminated by a greater distancing of the United States from the Arab-Israeli protagonists...

...Any American does, however, have a right to express an opinion on what United States policy in the Middle East should be, if that policy means actively supporting or opposing the actions of governments in the area...

...The U.S...

...It is, I think, a misguided and forlorn hope...

...that would not serve American, or Palestinian, or Israeli interests...

...BRUCE RUSSETT is Dean Acheson Professor of Political Science at Yale University and visiting Fulbright scholar at Tel Aviv University...

...There have been some disagreements on the margin, but even those were basically on matters of what the United States should do rather than what Israel should do...

...Israelis seem divided (sometimes within their own heads) on whether they hope or fear that Washington will impose some sort of settlement on the Middle East...

...After spending several months in Israel it is more apparent to me than ever that these problems are immensely complex, and that there is no simple solution...

...Less obvious costs are those involved in incurring or preventing terrorism, an estrangement from some Arab governments that invites Soviet penetration, and the risk of being drawn into another and more severe oil embargo, or, worst of all, into a Middle East war that escalates into a Soviet-American conflict (possibly a nuclear one...

...Only a Palestinian delegation seen as chosen by people in some control of their own fate can enlist support for any agreement...

...But neither should it- figuratively or literally-give Israel a blank check which imposes costs on the United States...

...Individual citizens of democracies have friends-in this case the personal ties between Americans and Israelis- which rightly give rise to expression in the political area...

...Forlorn, because the United States government is not capable of imposing even a diplomatic solution...

...Nor is it realistic to expect a replay of Jimmy Carter at Camp David...

...Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's stated policy is never to negotiate with the PLO, never to accept a Palestinian state, and never to trade territory for peace-in effect accepting a long-term reality of rebellion and repression...

...Nor would it be a withdrawal of American ultimate moral responsibility to help underwrite the resolution of a conflict to which the United States has itself contributed...

...oil is now cheap and plentiful again-for a while at least...

...The whole balance sheet needs careful evaluation...

...For example, whether the U.S...

...if not it should not...

...For the hopers, the U.S...

...Both parties have begun to learn from the intifada about the limits to which either can realistically be pushed, and that the status quo is not indefinitely tolerable...

...But arguably they all would be reduced...

...Nor, in my opinion, should it do so...

...One appropriate form of help might be assistance in supervising truly free Palestinian elections to a negotiating entity which both Israelis and Arabs would consider a legitimate representative...

...In the longer run, carrots like aid for permanently resettling refugees inside and outside of Palestine, development assistance to all parties, and perhaps military and political guarantees of an agreement would be in order if requested by those directly involved...

...Against the costs are a vital American interest in Israel's survival, and intangible benefits such as those deriving from U.S.-Israel military and intelligence cooperation...

...American policy has for the past decade essentially consisted of supporting whatever broad policy has been pursued by the government of Israel...

...Neither of them, however, is likely to decline quickly or sharply enough to produce serious direct pressure on Israel...

...Carter worked in the context of a recent energy crisis traceable directly to the Middle East conflict...

...As Americans have also learned by observing events, they may have something useful to share...

...and whether the U.S...

...Excessive American short-term support of Israeli policy could erode the basis for long-term support...

...Cash in the form of $3.5 billion a year in government aid to Israel (counting a half-billion in indirect subsidies) and over $2 billion to Egypt is but one aspect of those costs...

...The combination of domestic political pressures and the image of Israel as a strategic asset in the superpower rivalry make it impossible for an American government to require the Israeli government to take any major action to which it is opposed...

...at best they drive them underground for a while, and only then if enforced by "sticks" of armed coercion that are inconceivable in this situation...

...as a sovereign international actor-not Israel-should talk to the PLO...

...Both of these underpinnings are eroding somewhat-domestic support for Israel as a result of the intifada, PLO diplomacy, and fiascoes like that of "who is a Jew...

...Carter spent many weeks devoting himself exclusively to the Begin-Sadat negotiations in 1978, at great political risk (had the negotiations failed, or had he been seen as having coerced Israel) and with little gain to himself (the temporary upsurge in Carter's public approval ratings did him no good by the 1980 elections...

...Misguided first, because Americans have neither the depth of knowledge nor the personal stake to justify imposing a "solution" on someone else...

...It would not be an expression of moral judgment on a conflict that defies total judgments of right and wrong...

...if so, should the U.S...

...But those individual interests do have to be weighed against the larger interests of the state...

...In an era of tight federal budgets, holding the line or gradually reducing actual dollar expenditures (with a true reduction in aid after inflation) is eminently defensible...

...is the deus ex machina to save the Israelis from themselves...

...government has not told Israel that it must negotiate with the PLO, or withdraw from the occupied territories, or accept certain international guarantees...