Obstacles to a Mideast Peace

...Subsequently the PLO pirated the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro, and after killing a crippled, elderly American Jewish passenger "explained" that their original intention was to stage a machine-gun attack in the Israeli port of Ashdod, where the ship was scheduled to call...

...The situation is further complicated by the fact that Hussein needs major concessions before he can dare to sit down with Israel without Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chief Yassir Arafat at hisside, yet Peres cannot makemajor concessions and stay in power unless Hussein first disassociates himself from Arafat and indicates a readiness for substantive territorial changes...

...Hussein has reduced Peres' chances of success as well by suddenly making up with Syria, the most implacable of Israel's neighbors...

...In the framework of Palestinian autonomy, it is said, the Israeli Army would remain in charge of overall security, while Jordanian police would be responsible for internal security everywhere except in existing Jewish settlements...

...But Jerusalem was eager to avoid damaging the chances of negotiations with Amman and, instead, bombed PLO commando headquarters in Tunisia...

...Coming amid reports of mounting Moslem fundamentalism in Egypt, and of students demonstrating for abrogation of the peace treaty with Israel, the sequence of events enabled Right-wingers in this country to argue with some seeming justification that not only were concessions to the Arabs dangerous, they were also useless, since even a formal peace agreement was not really reliable...

...Prior to and following the Cyprus slaughter, several Israelis on the West Bank were murdered by Arab youths acting under instructions from PLO command posts in Jordan that Hussein had permitted to reopen, ostensibly as part of his effort to bring Arafat around to recognizing the Jewish State's right to exist...

...Despite the tight security that has cut down traffic in arms and explosives, thanks to the Open Bridges policy across the Jordan River it remains easy to send instructions to already supplied cohorts lying low on the West Bank...

...Israel has repeatedly warned that it would hit back at the sources of terrorism, so attacking the PLO command posts would have been fair game...

...This atmosphere prompted Ariel Sharon, now Trade Minister (and main instigator of the ill-conceived invasion of Lebanon as Defense Minister under Menachem Begin), to launch an all-out political offensive against Prime Minister Peres' UN General Assembly speech renewing his peace offer to Jordan...

...Asaresult, four people, two ofthem children, bled to death...

...Optimists here have tried to convince themselves that Hussein's public pronouncements are only a camouflage of his private efforts to come to some interim agreement with Israel...

...Their moves were actually part of Sharon's campaign to oust Shamir from Likud's leadership...

...Ironically, both Peres and Shamir are to a significant extent hostages of Jordan's King Hussein: The more responsive he is to Peres' initiatives, the more he strengthens the Prime Minister's position in the coalition and with Israeli public opinion...

...Peres wants to move the peace process along to the point where it would be difficult to derail...

...Jewish inhabitants would vote for Knesset members, and the Arab population would vote in Jordan's parliamentary elections...

...On a more concrete level, however, a series of developments indicating the depth of prevailing Arab hostility does not augur well for Peres' desire to advance the peace process...

...As if that weren't bad enough, the Egyptians did not permit the evacuation of the wounded for several hours, or even access to them by other Israelis on the spot, including a doctor...

...Cairo lamely said," The soldier went berserk...

...Although Peres and his entourage strenuously deny it, the story going round is that Jordan will be offered some sort of condominium with Israel on the West Bank...

...Likud, meanwhile, is trying to navigate between slowing down Peres and losing the chance to take over by blowing up the coalition...

...Yet it was not merely their usual hawkishness that motivated Sharon and Levy...

...As usual, Western Europe hastened to echo Arab condemnations of the retaliation...

...Many here doubt that Sharon, a newcomer to Likud, could ever become its head...

...The fiasco of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's willingness to meet two PLO "moderates" in London if they would publicly reject terrorism had a similar effect in Israel...

...But the Jordanian King knows full well that such a big international conference, aside from being unacceptable to Israel, is the surest way to guarantee the failure of a peace undertaking...

...Finally, he insisted that any negotiations must be held at an international conference, with the superpowers and all of Israel's neighbors present, thus ignoring Peres' insistence that this could only be a brief prelude to direct talks...

...out of bounds...

...Prime Minister Shimon Peres has one year left in office before he has to give way to his Deputy, Likud Leader Yitz-ehak Shamir, under the terms of a rotation plan that made Israel's present National Unity Government possible...

...POLITICAL BOOBY TRAPS Obstacles to a Mideast Pcacc by eliahu salpeter Tel Aviv Not since the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem eight years ago has diplomatic and political activity in the Middle East approached the intensity of recent weeks...

...Peres, for example, has pointed out that Hussein did not mention the PLO as a necessary partner to talks...

...Israelis, Americans and Arabs, noting the lengthy negotiations that lie ahead, feel time is running out because it will be much harder to reach compromises once the shift has occurred...

...conversely, a negative attitude on Hussein's part supports Likud's contention that any agreement with Jordan and the Palestinians is possible only at the price of selling out Israel's vital interests...

...Nevertheless, Shamir is not taking any chances and has joined critics of the peace process, diminishing its prospects...

...Because penetrating Israeli borders has become increasingly difficult, though, the PLO terrorists struck outside, gunning down three Israelis vacationing on a yacht in Cyprus...

...The Achille Lauro hijacking diverted attention from the Tunis bombing, but not before Europe's sharp criticism and Italy's release of Abu Abbas, the PLO leader who masterminded the taking of the cruise ship, again scored points for the Israeli Right...

...The majority of independent observers, though, take the gloomier view that the gap between what the King sees as a minimum for the Arabs and what even Peres considers a minimum for the Israelis still seems to be unbridgeable...

...Never in current history," he declared, "has there been an occupation so cruel as Israel's occupation of the West Bank...

...Arafat's contribution to torpedoing possible talks between Israel and Jordan has been made in traditional PLO fashion, with a new wave of terrorism— which he apparently hoped would also show the Syrian supported dissidents who split away from his organization that he was not abandoning the "armed struggle...

...His strategy called for discrediting the Deputy Prime Minister as a "dove...

...The accusations, he calculated, would ensure Shamir's preventing any concessions by Peres and ultimately lead to the breakup of the National Unity Government...

...In the intervening period, he would be named to replace Shamir as the head of Likud at its convention scheduled to be held before the end of the year...

...Sharon was soon joined by Housing Minister David Levy (and eventually Finance Minister Yitzchak Modai...

...This double bind has led to strong rumors of an interim arrangement that would enable both men to claim they have not given in on any important issue...

...But most analysts here caution against making a direct connection between all the speeches and travels and the prospects for an early peace agreement...

...In addition, inaspeech opening Jordan's Parliament he went out of his way to pour cold water on any hopes of a compromise...

...With the peace process undone, and the emergency economic measures having had insufficient time to work their magic on the domestic front, Peres' Labor Party would lose the elections, opening the door to the Prime Minister's office for Sharon...

...Most ominous, perhaps, has been the deterioration of relations with Egypt, precipitated by an Egyptian soldier opening fire on a group of Israeli tourists at a resort in northeast Sinai, south of Elath—where he was ELIAHU SALTPETER, a regular NL contributor, is a correspondent for Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak then added to the sense of outrage when he told journalists the whole incident was "a minor matter...