There is a path to peace in the Middle East

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the extent to which Shimon Peres betrayed the cause of peace

It may seem peculiarly perverse to see any chink of light in the Middle East situation on the day of the Mombasa suicide bomb, the killing of at least five voters in northern Israel and the Likud leadership primary elections. It probably is perverse.

With the Kenyan attacks we are straight back into the world of assault on civilians, of the attempts by al-Qa'ida (or whoever) to make the Palestinian issue a central part of its crusade against the West and of the global war against terrorism – the bog of blame and rhetoric from which no person emerges with his or her reason intact.

And the Likud election? Well we're back to the hard line of outrage followed by counter-violence followed by even greater outrages that has become the dance of death from which neither partner seems willing to disengage. We have passed the point where it seems to matter any longer who's to blame, who started it, whether the Arabs deny Israel's right to exist or the Israelis deny the Palestinians a right to a viable future. The participants are so mired in the logic of retaliation that they have lost their own volition. And with elections in Israel next January almost certain to return Likud with an increased majority, there is no sign that the pattern could change for years.

And yet some things have changed, most importantly in Israel itself. With the leadership elections of the two main parties we are back to a genuine alternative of a Labour leader offering a peace route and a Likud government offering – well, more of the same with even greater toughness. Whether the Palestinian leadership is clever enough to work this to its own advantage is open to debate, of course. But the opportunity is there after two years in a cul-de-sac from which there has been no obvious exit.

It is, after those two years, almost impossible to exaggerate the extent to which the Labour leadership, and Shimon Peres in particular, betrayed the cause of peace in keeping within the national government. And for the lowest political reasons of party interest. Labour saw it as the only means of self-preservation given the passion of Israeli public opinion against Yasser Arafat. Shimon Peres argued that his presence at least kept the line of communication open for peace.

In fact, it served the opposite purpose. Ariel Sharon has never had a plan for peace. He has had a plan for security. You can search in vain his speeches or interviews to find any commitment to dismantling the settlements that he kick-started as a policy when minister a generation ago. Nor can you find any outline, even sketchy, of a peace plan. Once the Palestinians admit defeat and stop all forms of resistance to occupation, then he will consider talking to them.

It doesn't take a genius to work out the result of Sharon's plan. The more he has declared his ability to achieve security, the more the Palestinian young and active have seen it necessary to show that he has not. The more Sharon (supported by Washington) has declared that he will not deal with Arafat, the more the Palestinians (most of whom have little time for the PLO leader) have seen it necessary to rally round the old rogue.

"If only," argue moderate Zionists, "the Palestinians would stop blowing up buses for six months, then Israeli opinion would accept peace." But what if they had? There was nothing on the table to say what they would gain other than Sharon crowing about how he'd won the war. Certainly nothing to suggest that they would be offered a viable state from a man who publicly declared that he never believed in Oslo and would never offer the terms so nearly agreed at Taba.

By remaining part of the government, the Labour party deprived Israel of its usual kaleidoscope of opinion. Sharon could regularly appear in Washington as the voice of an embattled Israel instead of a hard man of the right representing only one strand of Israeli views.

Perhaps there is no other strand, which is certainly what many Arabs believe. For them a Netanyahu leadership might actually be better than a Sharon one. The former, they argue, has so little credibility in Western capitals, including Washington, and would go so far overboard in his actions that the outside world would have to intervene.

Even without a Netanyahu victory there are still many Palestinians who, looking on the prospect of a Sharon government committed to endless rounds of incursion, assassination and re-occupation, feel that only the direct intervention of the Americans and/or the UN to separate the parties can provide the breathing space necessary for future peace.

But such intervention is most unlikely. Short of the Armageddon scenario (and that is not impossible), it is difficult to envisage a US administration ever seeing it to its advantage, domestically or internationally, to force a peace settlement in the Middle East, while Tony Blair's suggestions of a solution are really no more than pipe dreams conjured up to offset his support for an invasion of Iraq.

Nor do I think it is yet time to give up all hope of peace between the parties from within, although they may need nudging and help from without. The Sharon part of the equation is known and unchanging. There will be no peace with him. But the election of Amram Mitzna to Labour, a distinguished former general and a long-time opponent of Sharon's thuggish ways with a clear idea of what a peace settlement might contain, means a new avenue for talks between Palestinians and Israelis.

Mitzna is a known factor to the Palestinian and, on the whole, well-respected. He is not hung up on the idea that you can never negotiate with Arafat (an irrelevance to practical progress). He has said that he sees the basis of peace in the Taba agreement, which at least provides a firm basis on which to talk. To the Israeli voter and the American public, Mitzna can present an alternative route of accommodation with Palestinians, while the PLO can present a search that has some support from within Israel.

That doesn't mean that the Palestinians won't shoot themselves in the foot with a badly-timed outrage or internal bickering. But they are beginning to learn that if their cause is to get anywhere, they must gain the sympathy of people within Israel and (as Edward Said keeps trying to urge them) inside America.

Of course, it's not going to happen in a hurry, and certainly not in time for the January election. Of course the enmity between the peoples has grown infinitely more bitter and more deep-rooted in the last few years. There are plenty of Israelis who now say that you can never trust any Palestinian just as there are Palestinians who would happily see the removal of Israel from the Middle East altogether. But one also meets too many Palestinians who don't want endless war and too many Israelis who don't want it either to say that the two sides can never sit down together.

There are two fundamental truths about the Middle East that tend to get too easily submerged in the blood. One is that any Palestinian state – economically, if for no other reason – has to live in a symbiotic relationship with Israel. The other is that Israel over the long term only has a future if it is part of an Arab Middle East. It cannot survive as an embattled enclave in a sea of enemies. Not if it wishes any future for its grandchildren.

On those two facts you can, and may yet, construct a peace.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk