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Friday September 11, 1998

Five years and counting, peace takes time

Five years ago Sunday an uneasy handshake took place on the White House lawn between two longtime enemies, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. The now-historic gesture gave Jews throughout the world reason to hope that peace might be on the horizon.

Half a decade later, we all have realized that the road to peace is full of potholes large enough to wreck even the best of intentions.

Perhaps expectations were too high. After so many years of hatred, maybe Arabs and Jews couldn't be good neighbors. Some hardline naysayers suggested that maybe they couldn't be neighbors at all.

Yet despite the intransigence and even insincerity of the present players, the process is inevitably unstoppable.

Maybe Arabs and Jews can't live in harmony yet. Maybe the peace process will continue to hobble along with its fits and starts and pronouncements of its death. Maybe we all need to be more patient.

Even if Arabs and Jews can't be friends, they can still coexist without having to resort to violence. You don't have to adore your neighbor. You just have to learn how to live next to him without tossing grenades over his fence.

Israel may have to move ahead with a proposal to build physical barriers between Jewish communities and Arab villages. Today's generation of Arab and Jew may have to separate themselves for a while before a future generation is ready to knock down those walls and visit each other's homes.

But such barriers don't prevent the peace process from moving forward. The two unfriendly entities can still agree on how land can be divided, on water supplies, on airline landing rights and on other issues that need to be resolved.

The intelligentsia on both sides know that those arrangements must and will be made. It may take some time to work out the details but the process has come too far for it to end.

While the fifth anniversary of the signing gives us little to celebrate, there is no reason to lose hope. Perhaps frustration is in order for the moment. But some kind of peace agreement will eventually emerge.

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