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chairmanship of the signing ceremony testified to the
unchallenged global leadership role that is now America's.

Only the most churlish or fanatical would refuse to join the
almost palpable hope expressed at the White House ceremony
that Palestinians and Israelis have learned that, in conflict,
both are condemned to permanent suffering, and that they will
settle the remaining issues, which happen to be all the major
ones, in the same spirit of goodwill that characterized the
ceremony; that Israel and the now inevitable Palestinian state
will then live side by side much as Holland and Belgium do;
and that the other states in the area will make a peace of
reconciliation with Israel.

One of the functions of fairy tales is to lift sights to the
possibility of miraculous events. But statesmen who base their
policy on the expectation of miracles usually suffer
shipwreck. In the years ahead, the idyll on the White House

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lawn can only be fulfilled if all the parties concerned apply
its spirit to resolving the nagging questions which remain.
These include, for example, what exactly was being recognized
by each party and what is its long term significance? However
unavoidable, was it premature to invest Arafat with the aura
of a head of state three years after his support of Saddam
Hussein in the Gulf War and on the basis of "granting" Israel
a status that is the automatic prerogative of nearly every
other nation? Was the euphoria in which we all shared a spur
to the process, whose most difficult stages are still ahead,
or an obstacle to it if it leads to disillusionment after the
nearly inevitable deadlocks of the next stage have appeared?

However difficult these problems, they will be tackled in an
unprecedented atmosphere of goodwill. Almost as important is
the fact that these agreements were made by the parties
involved without American - or any other outside - pressure,

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and without America's knowledge. This obliges the parties to
live in good faith with what they have built and to remove the
probable roadblocks. Though America did not participate in
drafting the agreement, its contribution to shaping its
consequences will be essential. And it should resist euphoria
so that it can foster hope.

The ceremony at the White House marked a psychological
breakthrough. But the most difficult substantive issues still
lie ahead. The Israeli-Palestinian agreement has two parts: an
interim agreement for five years in which Israel withdraws
from Gaza and Jericho and establishes autonomy for the rest of
the West Bank, and a procedure for negotiating the final
settlement, which starts after two years.

In the interim agreement, Israel has traded some significant
measure of control over the occupied territories for a
breathing space. It will retire from Gaza and Jericho within

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four months, after elections in the West Bank; within nine months, it will abolish the military government over the rest of the occupied territory, withdraw its troops from populated areas, and turn over almost all of the civilian administration to an elected council. In return for a process that establishes a Palestinian entity and almost certainly a Palestinian state, the PLO has agreed to exclude Jerusalem, the Israeli settlements, a delineation of frontiers, and Arab refugees from the interim agreement. These will be discussed in a negotiation for a final settlement starting in two years.

Israel remains in control of the settlements, of Jerusalem, of its military bases, the roads of the West Bank, and of external security for all the occupied territories (including Gaza). Internal security will be in the hands of what the agreement calls a "strong" police force recruited from

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Palestinians inside as well as outside the West Bank, provided
the latter carry Egyptian or Jordanian passports.

These agreements are a significant and, above all, a
necessary step forward. As all diplomatic documents, they
represent a compromise which must be compared not with what
each side would consider ideal, but with what would exist in
the absence of the agreement. They are, however, the beginning
of the march toward peace, not the end of it. And all the
parties must learn to live with what they have built, which is
quite different from what is familiar to them.

The most immediate issue is to understand what exactly has
been recognized and who did the recognizing. Israel has
recognized the PLO but seems to believe that it has not
recognized a Palestinian state and that it can choose the
representatives of the Palestinians with whom it is prepared
to deal. This is surely an illusion. I have in the past

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