THE PEACE OF THE BRAVE

The table around which they gathered was the same and the two men shaking hands were the same, yet the mood was somehow different. Perhaps it was the diminished ardor of a repeat performance. Or maybe it was the spectacle of Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat actually seeming comfortable with each other. Whatever the reason, even the principals seemed to sense that last Thursday's gathering at the White House paled in comparison with the September 1993 ceremony, when the Israelis and the Palestinians stunned the world by signaling their determination to end the hostilities that had divided them for 45 years. "Perhaps this picture has already become routine," observed Rabin. "The handshakes no longer set your pulse racing."

Maybe not, but they still warmed the heart. For if last week's ceremony lacked the breakthrough drama of its predecessor, it offered something the earlier accord did not--a blueprint for peace and reconciliation unprecedented in its scope and detail. Stage managers from the Clinton Administration did their bit to improve the mise-en-scene, having decided as long ago as last July that this ceremony, if it ever happened, would be enhanced by the presence of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and King Hussein of Jordan. Further hand-holding from the White House became necessary when Rabin and Arafat balked over an unresolved hitch minutes before the document was due to be signed, forcing Clinton to closet himself with both leaders in his private dining room and urge them to settle their differences. But in the end the script itself, which Arafat hailed as "the peace of the brave," was enough to steal the show.

After the ceremony, Washington's relief was palpable. "This was an immensely difficult negotiation," was the understated verdict of U.S. special Middle East coordinator Dennis Ross, the diplomatic midwife whose intensified ministrations during the past several months included a three-hour session by telephone hours before the draft agreement was initialed. "It will mean," he added, "that the Israelis are no longer going to be ruling Palestinians."

The road to reconciliation had to overcome dark disillusion among Arabs and Israelis alike. After the euphoria following the 1993 agreement, the peace process seemed mired in blood as Palestinian terrorists tested Israel's patience and Israelis cracked down with chokehold security arrangements over the Palestinians' newly autonomous enclaves of Jericho and the Gaza Strip. Yet two nearly uninterrupted months of living and working in the same hotel enabled more than 100 negotiators from each side not only to bridge these differences but also to develop a grudging respect, even affection, for one another. The encyclopedic document that resulted takes a giant step toward turning the spirit of cooperation into reality by laying out exactly how the Israelis will withdraw their troops from most towns and villages of the West Bank by the end of next March, transferring civil authority to an elected Palestinian Council. Its 304 pages of articles, annexes and appendixes ricochet back and forth between the abstract and the arcane, recoiling from pledges of "mutual understanding and tolerance" to notes on how many adzuki beans the Palestinians could import from Jordan.