Taking the hill

Editorial

Ehud Barak, Israel's new prime minister, may have exchanged his army khakis for a dark business suit, but military bearing still defines him. In the six weeks between his election and his July 6 swearing in, he assembled a government with the precision of the career general he was.

Forging seven of Israel's disparate parties into a coalition that encompasses a nearly two-thirds majority of the Knesset was a clever tactical move. Appointing cabinet officers who will follow his command, and deliver the support of those who follow them, increases Barak's chances of wresting consensus, however untidy, from the contentious Israeli electorate.

Barak is on the offensive, with a whirlwind of meetings with key regional leaders in the Mideast, culminating this week in talks with President Clinton in Washington, D.C. Adopting a conciliatory rather than combative tone, and playing on his experience as a soldier who knows only too well the human costs of war, he evokes real hope for ending almost 100 years of regional strife in the Middle East. He is carefully laying the seeds for necessary compromise if Israel and its neighbors are ever to achieve lasting peace.

His two-pronged approach, pursuing the Syrians and the Palestinians simultaneously, likely will prod movement on both fronts. Time is on Barak's side, as he is dealing with two ill, aging leaders: Syria's Hafez al-Assad and the Palestinian Authority's Yasser Arafat, both of whom are concerned with assuring their places in history and providing for orderly transitions of power.

Smart, too, is Barak's insistence on refraining from discussion of the final two phases of the Wye agreement and instead jumping immediately into final status talks with the Palestinians.

Barak, who carved a brilliant career as a military strategist, knows the benefit in taking the hill before securing ancillary vantage points. Jerusalem, and its status as the undivided capital of Israel, is a monumental hill if ever there was one. Right now, Barak looks prepared to hold it - and with it the promise of peace.

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