U.S. in Middle East

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travels again to Washington today to meet with U.S. President Bill Clinton in another attempt to save the Middle East peace talks. Unlike his previous trips, there is a greater urgency now to salvage the peace process in view of the growing violence in the West Bank, which has all the signs of further escalation.

Whether today's talks will amount to anything is doubtful, as long as Netanyahu remains as hardheaded as he has since elected to office by a small margin in June.

The Palestinians have already given the thumbs down to his proposal to speed up talks on a final peace treaty, through a "Camp David" style of negotiations. That they did not even bother to wait for details of the plan to come out is a measure of their mistrust of Netanyahu. Given that Netanyahu has reneged on many commitments which the previous Israeli government had made under the current peace agreement, it is no wonder that Palestinian leaders view his offer as yet another ploy to bid for more time.

A small gesture, like halting the building of Jewish settlements in Arab's East Jerusalem -- something that Palestinians are demanding as a precondition for returning to the negotiating table -- has been rejected by Netanyahu. The building of settlements which started last month is what unleashed the fresh round of violence in the West Bank and the suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv over the past few weeks. Halting construction would go a long way toward restoring Palestinian confidence that Israel genuinely wanted peace.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has done everything expected of him. He has kept his side of the bargain, at the expense of earning the wrath of some extreme elements in the Palestinian camp. He has even rounded up suspected terrorists in Palestinian-controlled areas. The West Bank violence and the few terrorist attacks of the past few weeks would have been worse were it not for Arafat's personal role in containing anger among Palestinians. Israel would be pushing its luck too far to demand more from Arafat.

But it is not only Netanyahu's intentions that have been questioned in the current Middle East peace process. The United States, which has so far played the role of an honest peace broker, has lost some credibility in the eyes of Palestinians, and the Arab world, for vetoing two anti-Israeli resolutions at the United Nations's Security Council this past month.

To its credit, the United States has pushed the peace process to the current advance stage, winning concessions from both Israelis and Palestinians, since it seized the peace initiative from European hands in 1993. As Israel's main sponsor, the United States was expected to exert pressure and influence on Israel, and this it has duly done. But with the vetoes at the Security Council, Washington's ability to act as an impartial mediator has become doubtful. Going to Camp David when U.S. credibility is under question could be counterproductive.

While Washington publicly opposes the building of Jewish settlements, it has justified its two vetoes at the Security Council by saying that the United Nations was not the appropriate body for dealing with issues that should be settled directly between the Palestinians and Israel. That sounds more like a pretext. Given that the peace process has reached such a delicate stage, letting in the United Nations, or other major players like the European Union, in on the Middle East scene is probably what is really needed to get the peace talks moving again.