President Clinton's initiative in calling a summit on the deteriorating Middle East peace process Is timely and welcome. Until it was announced yesterday, the frantic international attempts over the weekend to reduce tension and encourage a return to dialogue and negotiation had fallen on deaf ears, judging by the response of the Israeli government. This meeting in Washington has the tone of an invitation that cannot be refused. It should serve as a reminder that what is at stake in this conflict is of the widest international concern.
Yesterday's reopening of the disputed tunnel in the old city of Jerusalem, together with the statements that no meetings would be held between the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr Yasser Arafat until all violence has ceased, amounted to a rejection of such pleas. The stage could be set for a more severe deterioration into violence, even war, if the Israelis attempt to carry out their threat to disarm the Palestinian police and to reconsider their commitments to redeploy troops from Hebron and other occupied towns, as were outlined by Mr David BarIllan, Mr Netanyahu's hawkish spokesman.
This would amount to an unravelling of what has been achieved by the peace process so far, an abnegation of commitments entered into by the previous Labour government in the name of a sovereign state. Is this truly what the Israeli government wants, or is it bluff and bluster with which it is trying to protect its flank from international criticism after a disastrously mishandled week?
There is not much time left to clarify matters. Israel faces a fateful choice over whether to restore the peace process and implement commitments made, or to reverse them. The United States's abstention on the vote on the Security Council resolution must be seen in the context of this presidential initiative. There can be no mistaking the thrust of international opinion. The calls for the Jerusalem tunnel to be closed, peace process commitments to be implemented and negotiations resumed are virtually unanimous. They were given added point by the joint statement issued on Friday evening by the leaders of France, Germany and Britain, the destinations of Mr Netanyahu's visit to Europe last week.
If this is a real signal of a willingness to become more involved it could represent an important stage in the development of a more coherent European policy. The EU is providing the largest amount of aid to underwrite the peace process, while its trade could be used to bring pressure to bear on the parties to negotiate. A European initiative would be all the more necessary if the US proves incapable of decisive action in coming weeks because of the election campaign and the widely assumed political necessity for President Clinton to avoid antagonising Jewish voters.
But this would stretch the credibility of US brokerage of the process to breaking point; it is to be hoped that this initiative betokens a readiness to take firm action despite such political constraints. The line being pursued by Mr Netanyahu's government, that the Palestinians have planned and provoked the violence, is audacious but quite unconvincing on the evidence. The more attenuated the peace process the more Mr Arafat loses control of events and the more his police forces are likely to respond to popular pressure to use their weapons against Israeli troops. Mr Netanyahu risks provoking an armed intifada, which would be more dangerous and regionally destabilising than the last one. That is why the international pressure must be kept up to put negotiations back on track.