The tragic end of Hamas's kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and the awful bus explosion Wednesday in the heart of Tel Aviv that killed 22 Israelis raise a number of daunting issues about the prospects for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
From every indication, the creation of a Palestinian state is inevitable. The Gaza-Jericho agreement provides only the first stage in the long road toward statehood. Israel and the United States would be well advised to accept this inevitable development and help the Palestinians establish institutions for democratic rule.
The 27th anniversary of Jerusalem's unification is being celebrated this month in Israel only a few weeks after the Palestinian self-rule agreement went into effect. Perhaps more than at any other time in the past 25 years the Israelis are concerned about the status of Jerusalem a few years down the line.
Yitzhak Rabin now faces an extremely difficult task: convincing Israelis of the wisdom of exchanging the Golan, which has been labeled "strategically critical," for peace.
On his maiden visit to the Middle East as United States secretary of state, Warren Christopher should lay the foundation for the revival of the Arab-Israeli peace talks without the deportees' cloud hanging over the next round of peace negotiations. It is far better to postpone the resumption of the peace talks by another two or three months, provided that the question of the expulsion is settled and all the deportees have been returned. The US-Israel agreement to allow 100 deportees to return home, with the rest to follow suit by the end of 1993, is flawed and impractical.
The aftershock of the Hebron massacre continues to reverberate through the Israeli consciousness, raising serious questions about fundamental Israeli ideology and understanding of the ethos of being Jewish at this historic juncture.
The massacre of at least 30 Palestinians in the Tomb of the Patriarchs during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan evoked a deep revulsion and a profound sense of vulnerability that explains the Palestinians' heightened rage and explosive rancor.
Since its capture by Israel in 1967, the Golan Heights has come to symbolize for both Israel and Syria more than an important strategic territory.
A strong Israeli public consensus in support of withdrawal from the Golan Heights is critical to any Israeli-Syrian agreement. That consensus is currently lacking. Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin must work separately and together to sway Israeli public opinion in that direction.