The usual accounts of American policy toward the Arab/Israeli conflict in the 1990s stress discontinuities, at least on two sides of the triangle: in Washington and in Jerusalem. In Israel, the Likud government of Yitzhak Shamir gave way to a Labor government dedicated to peace. Under Yitzhak Rabin and, after he was assassinated, Shimon Peres, Israel sought an accommodation with the Palestinians. In the United States, unfriendliness toward Israel under the Bush/Baker administration gave way to the warm friendship of the Clinton administration, which even many American lews apparently regard as "the best friend Israel ever had in Washington." Unfortunately, the Clinton efforts were frustrated when, from 1996 to 1999, a Likud government came back to power and under Benjamin Netanyahu Israel's policies reverted to the obstructionism of Shamir. So goes the most popular account.

But the real story of Arab/Israeli/U.S. relations in the 1990s—and now into 2000—is one of deep continuities. On the American side, the permanent presence of Dennis Ross as chief American strategist and negotiator signifies that the basic approach has not changed. That approach is to push the Israelis into a "land for peace" deal with the PLO that will inevitably bring into existence a Palestinian state. The underlying theory is equally straightforward: Palestinian radicalism is based in legitimate Palestinian grievances and cannot be vanquished until those grievances are satisfied by statehood. But once the legitimate longings for statehood are met, the radicals will be displaced and a moderate, democratic polity (Jordan without a king?) can be built. The suggestion that Palestinian irredentism would only be nourished by these successes has been dismissed by the Americans under Clinton as it was under Bush. Not even the event in Camp David in July 2000—where Arafat was offered startling Israeli concessions and rejected them as inadequate—has led to a fundamental reassessment of U.S. policy.

On the Palestinian side, Yasser Arafat's PLO, now transmogrified into the Palestinian Authority and soon to be the Government of Palestine, has remained faithful to its patented mixture of peaceful rhetoric and an ever-present threat (and occasional practice) of terrorism. Given the success of this rifles-and-rhetoric mix, the Palestinian fidelity to it is hardly surprising. And on the Israeli side, in the years since Prime Minister Rabin agreed to a land-for-peace deal with the PLO, Israeli policy has varied only in tactics, not in strategy. Netanyahu accepted and implemented the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords that gave the PLO control of Jericho, Gaza, the major West Bank cities, and most of the Palestinian population, and sold them to Israel's right wing, or "national camp," something a Labor government could never have achieved. As the Israeli election campaign of 1999 demonstrated, the consensus within that country on security issues is now extremely wide, in essence uniting the old Labor and Likud coalitions in support of the Oslo territorial concessions.

But the recent continuity in policy on all three sides of this triangle, and the agreement of all three sides to the Oslo approach, give a misleading impression. What- ever consensus was achieved around Oslo, the problems that lie ahead are even more difficult: (1) As core issues emerge about the future of Jerusalem, the return of refugees, and the rights of the new Palestinian state, compromise between the Israeli and Palestinian positions will become much harder. Within Israel, it is becoming apparent that the Oslo consensus has its limits. (2) The American pattern of indulging rather than challenging Palestinian misconduct will become far more dangerous. The United States will find it much more difficult to play honest broker, peace monitor, and chief ally of Israel all at once. (3) The next acts in this drama will be played out against a changing security situation in the region, where Cold War alliance patterns are giving way to new divisions between radical states and an increasingly warm Israeli-Turkish military alliance. (4) Finally, it is worth noting that some of the key players in the Middle East are now changing, as succession problems strike several Arab states.