Can the Palestinians Stay Away? : For Mideast peace talks, April may not prove the cruelest month

President Clinton is using a time-tested method to reassert the importance that Washington attaches to the Middle East peace talks, which were suspended after Israel expelled 400 Palestinian radicals to Lebanon Dec. 17.

Next week he plans to send Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Syria to assess the prospects of restarting the talks at an early date--April is being mentioned--and, no doubt, to urge greater political flexibility on all sides. By making the Arab-Israel circuit his first foreign trip since taking office Christopher will be signaling the high priority the new Administration gives to continuing the peace process. By directly involving his own prestige in the effort Christopher will be adding dramatic emphasis to that commitment.

There’s reason to think that Israel and the three Arab states on his itinerary are all ready--maybe even eager--to support a return to the negotiating table. (Egypt, though it is a significant backstage presence, isn’t a participant in the talks, having become in 1979 the first Arab state to make peace with Israel.) While any peace settlement remains a long way off, progress has been made in finding common ground on some issues. Not least important, the parties have discovered that they can have a civilized dialogue on even their most intractable differences.

The U.S. hope is that a willingness by Jordan and Syria to return to the conference table--Lebanon, another participant, can be expected to do pretty much whatever Syria tells it to do--will make it impossible for the Palestinians to maintain their boycott. Though there are signs of a division over tactics among the Palestinians, their delegation to the talks promises to stay away until Israel takes back all of the expellees, instead of just the 101 it has offered to readmit.

But if Jordan and Syria are ready to return to the negotiating table in a few months, can the Palestinians stay away? Probably not.

Christopher will be working to bring about such a return before the momentum seeps out of the process. The fact that he is quickly becoming personally involved could by itself do much to achieve that goal.