THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 20, 1994 TAG: 9410200014
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
Heartening Arab-Israeli peacemaking progress occurred in recent days only to be obscured by savagery. We welcome these positive developments, but cautiously, in the expectation that any celebration will be blown apart by enemies of reconciliation, as happened yesterday in Tel Aviv, Israel's biggest city.
Hamas fundamentalist-Muslim terrorists linked to Iran are going all-out to destroy Arab-Israeli peacemaking. Last week the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced the award of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat for their 1993 agreement to conclude decades of murderous conflict.
Hamas brutally eclipsed that news by kidnapping Israeli soldier Nahshon Waxman. Its purpose was to blackmail Israel into releasing more than 200 jailed Palestinians.
Pragmatic Israel refuses to reward terrorists - a hard policy that serves it well. Cpl. Waxman was killed by his captors as an Israeli rescue team stormed their hideout. A rescue-team member and three terrorists perished in the brief shootout, and others at the scene were wounded.
The kidnapping and rescue were horrors that menaced the peace process, which Israel necessarily suspended as it and Arafat's Palestinians sought Cpl. Waxman. The Israeli-Palestinian talks had resumed when the explosion in Tel Aviv killed 22 people and wounded 48.
Hamas claimed credit for the atrocity, which was in reprisal for the deaths of Cpl. Waxman's kidnappers, inviting a crackdown on itself that Arafat must conduct as relentless as Israel or lose his credibility.
Meanwhile, Palestinians denounce the Israeli-Jordanian pact as a betrayal of their interests.
Thus, peacemaking crawls onward through the pitiless Middle East minefield. Upon reaching Jerusalem on Tuesday, Syria's chief rabbi asserted that a Syrian-Israeli peace treaty is on the table, raising the prospect that Israel will soon have a treaty with another foe, as it now has with three foes. Not so, says Syrian President Hafez Assad - but Syria and Israel have been exploring accommodation for months.
So hope survives for eventual resolution of the quarrel between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Middle East is endlessly surprising. That some surprises these days are pleasant takes the edge off the predictably unpleasant. That's a blessing, however fragile. by CNB