Arabs on Edge as Sharon Appears Ascendant

C A I R O, Feb. 6 -- Ask any Arab about the future of the Middle East and most would answer that if Israel's Likud leader Ariel Sharon trounces Prime Minister Ehud Barak in today's Israeli elections — as opinion polls overwhelmingly indicate — then the peace process will be dead.

The Israeli Election Showdown

Officially Arabs say the Israeli elections are an internal affair and they will negotiate with whomever is elected as long as they offer a good basis for negotiations

But Arab dislike of the hawkish Sharon reaches decades, and hit its height in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon and Israeli forces abetted massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.

At the time of the invasion, and the subsequent massacres, Sharon was defense minister and was found by an Israeli inquiry to be "indirectly" responsible for the brutal massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps.

More recently, Sharon has been accused of igniting the latest round of violence — Al' Aqsa Intifada — by visiting the disputed Jerusalem holy site known as Al Haram Al-Sharif by Palestinians and known as the Temple Mount to Jews.

Since Sharon's visit to the site, about 380 people have been killed, the majority Palestinians.

Guardedly Optimistic

Israel's neighbors say they don't want to go to war but they fear Sharon could drag the whole region into conflict

In a recent interview with Israeli television, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak firmly ruled out any talk of war, but said he would deal with Sharon "provided he had peace in the Middle East as his main goal."

Egypt has long played the role of peace broker between Israelis and Palestinians.

But even for a moderate country like Egypt to mediate between Sharon and what he represents in the Arab mind could be an insurmountable problem.

Lebanon and Syria both host large populations of Palestinian refugees and for them to deal with hardliner Sharon would be "a very sensitive matter if not nearly impossible" says one Western diplomat based in Damascus.