What Albright didn't do

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's public candor on the Middle East is refreshing. Visiting the region, she pronounced her trip less than a success.

Albright, however, did not do the one thing the United States might do that goes beyond inducing the Israelis and Palestinians to talk and that actually offers a chance of contributing to an agreement. She did not close the telling gap in American policy -- the failure to endorse the Palestinians' goal of a state.

This hesitation to accept the obvious and the necessary is what unbalances American diplomacy. The Clinton administration supports security and peace for the Israelis in many concrete ways but denies parallel support for the Palestinians' prime objective.

The administration takes this position out of a desire not to get too far out in front of Israel's seemingly irreducible resistance to Palestinian statehood. The strange thing is, however, that Washington may be behind the curve of Israel's own Likud government. Israeli authorities have been indicating they might accept a Palestinian state with sovereignty over its territory. These hints cannot yet be regarded as reliable expressions of Israeli policy. The suggestion is, nonetheless, that Israel is open to a Palestinian state with a flag, authority over almost all Arab West Bankers and what is called a "Jerusalem capital" in an undivided Jerusalem, Israel would insist on protections -- heavy and intrusive protections -- for its security.

It is not too early to start thinking how the United States might help encourage such a negotiation, difficult as it might be. This is where the possibility of a substantive American contribution needs to be explored.

-- The Washington Post