The agreement reached in Sharm al-Sheikh yesterday to calm the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the best that could be expected. It will be extremely difficult to implement and will not achieve all its desired effects. But the measures agreed to bring an end to the recent violence by withdrawing Israeli troops, stopping demonstrators' clashes with them and ending the closure of the West Bank and Gaza are a good start. An inquiry into the cause of the violence is to be set up and an effort made to revive the peace talks.
Realistic calculations were made in reaching such a package deal. Israeli and Palestinian leaders have come sufficiently close to the brink of negotiating collapse to think twice about propelling themselves over the precipice of potentially much deeper conflict. They both face dreadfully difficult choices about their future and legitimacy should they fail. They are aware that more radical elements are waiting to take the initiative, capable of driving the Middle East region in more dangerous directions. Other states and quite different priorities would then come into play.
It very much remains to be seen whether what has been agreed at Sharm al-Sheikh is too little to calm down the conflict by giving Israeli-Palestinian negotiations a chance to re-establish their momentum. Trust has collapsed between the two sides over the last three weeks.
Compromises made during prolonged talks are no longer sustainable in the face of the popular dissatisfaction that has been expressed all over the Arab world - a process potentially lethal for its authoritarian regimes, which have striven hard to put the negotiations back in place. But they now have to face up to a pan-Arab public opinion convinced that the Oslo peace process fails to measure up to core principles set out in United Nations resolutions concerning land for peace, the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and the status of Jerusalem. This weekend's Arab League summit will surely concentrate on such issues.
The Israeli leaders have an equally difficult task. The dynamics of violence over the last three weeks has destroyed their relations with the Palestinian communities within the occupied territories and in Israel itself. International opinion is appalled by the imbalance of deaths in the violence and the disproportionate use of force by Israeli troops. It was agreed yesterday that President Clinton and the United Nations Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, will together assemble an international inquiry into these events capable of commanding trust from both sides. That represents major compromises by Mr Barak and Mr Arafat, who adopted narrowly intransigent positions on the issue prior to this summit.
The rest of the world looks on this crisis uncertain how to influence it and aware of its potentially deeply destabilising character. Mr Annan has spelled this out bluntly. World economic growth is endangered by threats to oil supplies and higher energy prices. European Union leaders are alert to regional instability in the Middle East and its possible spill-over effects. It is high time they asserted their interest in the region by a deeper involvement in the peace process and a determined effort to counter the United States's imbalanced support for Israel.