A Hopeful Summit Plan

Summits are overburdened with meaning in the Middle East, and that is especially true for a possible first get- together next week between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Korei. Korei, a longtime ally of Yasser Arafat, has been in office since October and has not met with Sharon.

The lack of dialogue demonstrates the absence of any living peace process between the two sides. Terrorists continue to blow up Israeli buses to kill civilians and Israeli troops keep raiding towns in the occupied West Bank and Gaza to capture or kill militants, with civilians all too often caught in the crossfire.

The United States has been notably disengaged since the June summit in Jordan with Sharon, President Bush and Korei’s predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas. Bush declared then that implementing the “road map” to peace drawn up by Washington, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia was a “matter of the highest priority.” Then, nothing or nearly nothing.

The U.S. dispatched three diplomats to Israel for meetings with government officials including Sharon on Thursday, as Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom met in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Israel is considering withdrawing from much or all of the Gaza Strip, the coastal area whose southern end abuts Egypt. There, about 7,500 heavily guarded Israeli settlers live surrounded by more than 1 million Palestinians.

A withdrawal would, aside from giving Palestinians one more part of an eventual state, remove a deep source of friction that fuels the hatreds of Hamas and other militant groups. Israel would have to coordinate with the Palestinian Authority to avert chaos during withdrawal, which would let Hamas take control of Gaza and use it to launch terror attacks on Israel. Egypt has a stake in a stable Palestinian-ruled Gaza and should, as it has in the past, help train Palestinian security forces.

Korei has held off confirming that he will meet with Sharon, obviously worried that the Israeli leader will refuse to discuss the barrier that Israel is creating between its territory and the occupied West Bank. Washington is the only force able to insist that the barrier, which the Israelis say is needed to stop terrorists, take as little Palestinian land as possible -- certainly far less than is now proposed.

There are no great expectations in a Sharon-Korei meeting. But if talks lead to Israeli withdrawals from Gaza and a Palestinian security force willing and able to stop attacks on Israelis, they could shake some rust out of the neglected peace process. Despite the bloodshed and inertia, a Palestinian state that can coexist with Israel is still what both governments claim as their goal.