Middle East Land for Peace?

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No matter when the next election comes, the campaign has already begun. The central issue: Israeli policies in the occupied territories. Israel's friends abroad are hoping the debate will provide an opening for new ideas in dealing with the Palestinian crisis. Yet just the reverse seems probable. Despite the waves of foreign criticism over the country's harsh methods of handling the unrest, the domestic political benefits seem more likely to fall to the hard- lining Likud than the more moderate Labor Party. A poll published last week by the Tel Aviv daily Ma'ariv indicated that 64% of the sample favored either the current policy or an even more stringent one and only 19% favored withdrawal from the territories.

In addition to conferring with Israel's divided political leaders, Shultz will travel to Jordan, Egypt and possibly other Arab countries in an effort to lay the groundwork for broader negotiations. Jordan's King Hussein has not overtly opposed the new U.S. effort but insists that any solution to the Palestinian issue must receive some kind of international guarantee -- a condition that is acceptable to Washington but not Shamir. For his part, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak feels strongly that any solution must go beyond the deliberately vague Palestinian "autonomy" called for in the 1978 Camp David accords and determine the final status of the occupied lands.

As Shultz prepared to begin his peace mission, widespread unrest continued to roil the occupied territories and even spread to a new region: the Druze villages of the Golan Heights, seized by Israel from Syria in 1967 and formally annexed in 1981. Some 8,000 stone-throwing protesters clashed with Israeli police in three villages. In all, 33 demonstrators were injured by rubber bullets and tear-gas canisters fired by police in quelling the disturbances. In the West Bank and Gaza, at least three Palestinians were killed last week as Arab youths stoned cars and torched buses to enforce a general strike.

The Israeli army, already under fire for its conduct, found itself embroiled in another controversy over a ghastly incident in the West Bank village of Salim. There, army officials said last week, Israeli soldiers forced four suspected riot leaders to lie on the ground last Feb. 5 and ordered an army bulldozer driver to push a mound of earth over them. Miraculously, the victims were dug out alive by villagers after the soldiers left. Army officials ; announced that two soldiers had been arrested for allegedly participating in the incident.

The turmoil spread beyond Israel's borders. Israel's foreign-intelligence service, MOSSAD, was widely suspected of involvement in two bombing incidents in the Cypriot port of Limassol last week. In one, three senior officers of Fatah, the main faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, were killed by explosives hidden under the seat of their car and detonated by remote control. Although the P.L.O. denies it, the three were apparently in Limassol to arrange the purchase of the Sol Phryne, a rundown ferryboat that the P.L.O. intended to use for a voyage dramatizing the plight of 130 Palestinians deported by Israel.