Cross-Purposes Stymie Endeavors by U.S.

WASHINGTON —  After a week of both staggering bloodshed and intriguing offers from the Arab League and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, U.S. peace efforts in the Mideast remained dependent on the answers to two broad questions: Are any of the parties actually on the same wavelength about what should happen next? And is anyone really listening to the United States?

The most hopeful reply to both, amid conflicting signals, is a very tentative “maybe.”

Despite the cautiously optimistic spin offered Thursday by U.S. officials, they privately acknowledged that the crisis could get far worse before any progress is made. And that was before the attack on Arafat’s office early today.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe welcomed the Arab League’s decision Thursday to embrace a proposal from Saudi Arabia that offers Israel “normal relations” in exchange for its withdrawal from territories occupied since the 1967 Middle East War. And President Bush pledged that the United States will continue to push for progress.

“I know the Middle East looks like there’ll never be peace. But I can assure you, we’re not giving up. We’re not going to let murderers disrupt a march to peace,” he said at a Dallas fund-raiser.

Yet the U.S. efforts basically are stuck in a bloody limbo, as illustrated by the events Thursday. To pave the way for deeper U.S. mediation, Arafat announced his willingness to accept an unconditional cease-fire--at the same time that Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a Jewish settlement near the West Bank town of Nablus, killing four people.

Meanwhile, Israel expressed skepticism about the overtures from both the Arab League and Arafat. Arafat “has to take real action,” said Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

This morning, Israel laid siege to Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters, fought fierce gun battles with his bodyguards and began demolishing the outer walls of his compound. It formally declared the Palestinian leader an enemy.

So despite a new sense of movement generated this week, the gap between the two sides is still wide--perhaps the biggest chasm since the peace process began more than a decade ago. “I don’t know if we’ve ever witnessed such a total collapse of trust,” a Bush administration official lamented. “It’s hard to see how to move forward.”

Both sides appear to be playing for points with their own constituencies, not each other, analysts say.

“Arafat’s offer is disingenuous. If he were able to deliver on a cease-fire, why didn’t he do it before?” said Henry Steigman, a Mideast expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Without a commitment from Israel to end the occupation and agree to the emergence of a Palestinian state, there’s no way he can enforce a cease-fire. So it’s a desperate ploy to hold off Israeli retribution.

“And Sharon’s approach has given more importance to annexing the territories and maintaining settlements than to peace with his neighbors. So his objective is to avoid returning to the borders of 1967, which means there is no reason to expect him to pay attention to the Saudi offer.”

Even the United States appears to be on a different wavelength. The Bush administration virtually dismissed Arafat’s cease-fire offer Thursday because it didn’t include an agreement on specific steps called for in a plan mediated last year by CIA Director George J. Tenet. And the State Department called the Arab League proposal a catalyst for peace, rather than a specific plan.

“It’s a vision. It’s an idea. [But] how to get there is still the problem,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. “Many of the issues need to be negotiated by the parties.”

Just how far apart the Israelis and the Palestinians remain is underscored by the very means of communication between them.

“Both sides have come to believe that violence is the most important instrument in preventing the other side from compelling them to accept undesirable terms,” said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians and Israelis often appear deaf to the appeals, proddings and proposals from the Bush administration.

For weeks, Arafat has refused to heed the now-daily U.S. calls to rein in militants and end the escalating cycle of violence. He repeatedly promises to act but fails to follow through.

“There’s such an anti-U.S. attitude that has developed among the Palestinians, because they perceive the administration is so pro-Israel that I doubt if they’ll be responsive to Bush and company,” said Los Angeles fund-raiser Stanley Sheinbaum, who helped broker breakthrough Mideast meetings in Stockholm in 1988.

And Sharon openly spurned calls from Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to allow Arafat, who had been confined to his West Bank headquarters, to attend the Arab League summit in Beirut. Sharon has also failed to act on appeals to lighten the economic pressure on the Palestinians, who have seen incomes more than halved and unemployment skyrocket during Israeli crackdowns.

“Sharon is such a hard-liner that he doesn’t care what the U.S. thinks,” Sheinbaum said. “In the final analysis, he needs U.S. support, arms and aid, but he’s a hard-nosed guy.”

U.S. officials acknowledge the difficulty of the situation. “Neither side is heeding the message. There’s little regard for our pronouncements, and there’s almost no sense of urgency for action,” the administration official said. “Both sides have instead become focused on what they perceive as the complete unreliability of the other party, and it’s hard for us to prove otherwise.

“And unfortunately, in the meantime, there’s still a lot of fight left in both sides.”

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Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this report.