DATE: Saturday, September 13, 1997          TAG: 9709130021

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   44 lines

PEACE MISSION: CHOOSE LIFE ALBRIGHT TRIES TO MAKE ACCOMMODATION BLOOM IN STONY GROUND.

In her first trip to the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has wrung a pledge from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to crack down on terrorist ``enemies of peace'' and counseled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop provoking Palestinians by, among other things, expanding Jewish settlements in their midst and demolishing Palestinian houses.

Albright - the Clinton administration - is trying to resuscitate the comatose peace process codified in the Oslo Agreement - fashioned by martyred Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin - aimed at producing peace with security for Israelis and Palestinians. But Albright acknowledged upon leaving the Middle East that her mission had made little or no progress.

That figures. All too many in the Middle East would rather fight than switch. All too many are steadfastly opposed to any accommodation flowing necessarily from compromise.

Too many Arabs won't rest until Israel is destroyed.

Too many Israelis cling to the dream of a Greater Israel incorporating land populated by Palestinians and known in biblical times as Judea and Samaria.

In the middle are the millions on both sides who would prefer to go about the business of living without fear, time and again proved justified, of being dispossessed, beaten or slaughtered.

Since the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin by a Jewish extremist, terrorism has driven accommodation advocates to the sidelines. Despite its best efforts, Washington could not coax peacemaking back on the field.

But although fear and loathing run deep and wide in both camps, hard realities are on the side of the peacemakers. Reality 1: Israel's will to survive and prosper is intact and buttressed by formidable military might. Although they have tried repeatedly, the Arabs cannot destroy Israel. Reality 2: Israelis' vital interests will be better served by arrangements giving Palestinians more and more reason to live in peace and harmony with Israel than to wish or do it ill.

The Oslo Agreement put Israeli and Palestinian on the path toward a mutually rewarding future - the path of life. The bloodthirsty extremists would lead them down the path of death. Hope that soon the balance tilts toward life.

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