West Bank withdrawal

Nothing is quite so difficult, definitive and irreversible in international relations as handing over territory, especially handing over territory to a former but still deeply distrusted foe. This is the significance of the first pullback that Israel is now conducting on the occupied West Bank under the terms of last month's U.S.-brokered Wye agreement. Not just religious and ultranationalist Israelis but also secular folk, who merely want to live a normal life, wonder whether the Netanyahu government is making a deal that will backfire. Yet enough of them understand the promise and necessity of exchanging Israeli-held territory for expanded Palestinian security assurances to make this first withdrawal in nearly two years a reality.

Palestinians mean these withdrawals to establish the initial geography of a Palestinian state but the Israelis so far insist that they are determined to block such a state. Nevertheless, there is a deeper parallel understanding of Wye. Defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai, a realist and a leading advocate and negotiator of the withdrawal, said: "The slicing-up of the land of our fathers is a difficult, painful step. But in our return to our homeland after 3,000 years of exile, the return to the beloved land of Israel, changes had occurred there, and another people dwelled in it."

Yasser Arafat made essentially the same pitch for support of Wye on the Palestinian side. By signing the accord with an Israeli Likud government, he said: "We managed to shatter the slogan of Israeli extremists regarding 'The Greater Israel'."

More agonies lie ahead on the negotiating path that the Israelis and Palestinians have chosen. They deserve respect for sticking to it -- and the Clinton administration deserves credit for helping them do it.

-- The Washington Post