False Dawn.('Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002')(Book Review)

Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002, by Charles Enderlin (Other Press, 308 pp., $28)

The liberation of Iraq has promoted the Israeli-Palestinian dispute to the status of next item of business in the Middle East. The parties have only to follow the State Department's road map, a beautiful little euphemism suggesting highways toward purposeful destinations. There's to be a sovereign state of Palestine alongside Israel, and all in place by 2005-another bright new regime to put an end to the resentment and hatred so many Arabs nurture against the United States and Israel. The logic is impeccable.

Unfortunately the road map doesn't match the features on the ground; it's just an abstract expression of fine sentiments uttered in imposing settings. Throughout most of the 1990s President Clinton already was stumbling against this reality. In a series of negotiations, including the Camp David summit of 2000 and its last-minute aftermath at Taba, he succeeded only in damaging the superpower prestige of the United States, exposing his own limitations, and endangering the future of Israel. His vaunted "peace process" proved to be war by other means. What with Palestinian suicide bombers and Israeli measures of self- defense, the two parties are now entrenched in a test of will and staying-power with existential implications.

Throughout the years of the abortive peace process, Charles Enderlin reported from Jerusalem for a French public-television channel. He and his camera team were in the habit of standing outside the door wherever and whenever American, Israeli, and Palestinian negotiators were meeting. The important players displayed a welcome camaraderie among themselves, and Enderlin was able to persuade many of them to visit his studio and give interviews or hold discussions.

Here, then, is a fly-on-the-wall reconstruction of the top-table diplomacy of the entire peace process, from its broad hopeful principles down to niggly legalistic details. The book is therefore a cautionary tale. On the main unresolved issues, Palestinians and Israelis held diametrically opposed opinions. They could not agree on the right of Palestinian refugees to return, or on the terms of any such return, or on the status of Jerusalem and the shrines holy to Islam and Judaism. Israel occupies Arab territories only because Arab armies attacked from those territories. The sole area of possible compromise arose from Israel's willingness to return almost 100 percent of these territories, with land from Israel proper ceded to make good the deficit. The negotiating procedure was invariable: The Israelis made proposals, the Palestinians made objections, and all remained stuck in their positions.

For the Palestinians, Yasser Arafat was in absolute charge of policy and negotiations. Every inch a pocket dictator, small-minded and suspicious, he was not in the habit of delegating. With consummate cunning, he took whatever he could from Israel and gave nothing. Loyal to the last, his subordinates, such as Saeb Erakat and Yasser Abed Rabbo, were left to handle public relations, and Enderlin gives them the opportunity to show how capable they were in this respect.

In general terms, the State Department and the Israeli Left have always argued that for the sake of peace Israel has to trust the Palestinians, turn a blind eye to terror, and make the concessions demanded of it. Concurring in this momentous conclusion, Yitzhak Rabin was the prime minister who first committed Israel to the peace process. For the somewhat star-struck Enderlin, Rabin was both wise and heroic; but a young Israeli fanatic, imagining that Rabin's concessions might endanger the state, murdered him.