Leading Article: Israel misses its chance of peace

The 1996 election campaign has already started in Israel. That is bad news for a peace process which calls for bold initiatives not populist rhetoric. Agreement with the Palestinians involves pulling out of the West Bank towns as promised under the 1993 Oslo agreement. A peace treaty with Syria would require withdrawal from all of the Golan Heights. Neither is easy for a Labour government lagging in the polls and accused by the opposition of endangering Israel's security by surrendering land conquered in 1967.

Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli premier, has only himself to blame for most of his difficulties. From the moment the Oslo agreement was signed his government's future hinged on its success. Yet Mr Rabin never seemed wholeheartedly behind it. When an Israeli settler killed 29 Palestinian worshippers in a Hebron mosque last year the agreement began to unravel. Palestinians felt they had been hoodwinked while Israelis concluded that Oslo had made them more vulnerable to attacks.

Labour still has some time in hand but not very much. The Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, says that if there is no agreement with Syria this year then it will never come. The Syrians, like the Palestinians, claim they are as happy to deal with the opposition, right-wing Likud party as with Mr Rabin, but it is doubtful that they mean it. A coalition led by Likud would be unlikely to withdraw from anywhere.

Likud's leader, Benjamin Netanyahu has no known recipe for carrying the peace process forward. Yet expectations among Palestinians and in the Arab world remain high. If they are disappointed then the outcome will be a political vacuum filled by suicide bombers and extremist settlers.

Mr Rabin may already have left it too late. He failed to remove the most violent of the Israeli settlers from the West Bank and Gaza when he had the support to do so. It will be almost impossible to force them out in an election year. An Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank might therefore be so limited that it would leave behind a patchwork of competing authorities with neither Israel nor the Palestinians wholly in control.

Not surprisingly Mr Rabin and Mr Peres appear to think that there are more electoral benefits available from a peace treaty with Syria. But here they are in the hands of President Assad. Although the return of the Golan is unpopular in Israel the Labour leaders take heart from the analogy with Camp David. Israelis did not want to return the Sinai to Egypt but agreed in return for a comprehensive peace. However, it is difficult to imagine President Assad following in President Sadat's footsteps. Perhaps the clearest mark of Labour's failure in office is that it must now rely on the unlikely magnanimity of Syria's leader if it is to secure peace and, with peace, its own hold on government.