WHEN the people of the Arab world went to bed late on Wednesday night, their leaders were reassured by the news from Israel that Mr Shimon Peres was leading in the race for the premiership of his country. Several reputable daily papers, printing at the midnight hour, even scrawled across their front pages headlines proclaiming his certain victory.
But all this changed while the Arabs slept. The stunned editor of a Beirut weekly rang this correspondent early yesterday morning and demanded. "How did it happen? What does it mean? Is it as bad as they say?"
The prospect of a victory for Mr Benjamin Netanyahu has shocked and shaken the Arabs who believed the peace process would move forward until a comprehensive regional settlement was reached, that the gains already achieved however meagre were irreversible.
However, yesterday morning's news from Israel shattered that belief. So alarmed were Israel's three Arab peace partners Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians that their leaders have called a summit for next week in Cairo.
Arab alarm flows from Mr Netanyahu's determination to remake the peace process to suit himself and his party. His object would be to abandon the "land for peace" formula as the basis of the peace process and replace it with his own "peace for peace formula.
This would be totally unacceptable to the Arabs whose motive in negotiating with Israel is the return of land occupied by the Jewish state since 1967. Unless a.the Palestinian territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem come under Palestinian rule, the Golan is returned to Syria and the strip of territory along the border to Lebanon, the Arab world would not be in a position to make peace with Israel.
Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan would have to freeze their peace treaties and cut relations with the Jewish state and the tentative contacts with Israel initiated by Oman, Qatar and Tunisia could be suspended.
Even if Mr Peres is eventually returned to office by the so far, uncounted votes of the army, considerable psychological damage has already been done by the threat of Mr Netanyahu's succession.
Material damage to the peace process would almost certainly follow because Mr Peres would be compelled to form a coalition with religious and right wing parties committed to the retention by Isarel of the West Bank ("Judea and amaria") and the Golan. At best he would have to slow the already slow process of peacemaking, putting it in very great danger from both Arab and Jewish extremists.
Arab analysts trying to put on an optimistic face have made the point that it was a Likud government which signed the peace treaty with Egypt and withdrew completely from the Sinai.
However, these analysts have not taken into account the fact that Sinai was never claimed as a Integral part of "Eretz Israel" by Likud ideologues. Although painful to abandon, the Sinai did not have the religious historical resonance for Jews of "Judea and Samaria", the Jewish heartland which also happens to be the Palestinian homeland, or, even, the Golan, a "land of milk and honey".
On the eve of the poll, Dr Hanan Ashrawi, the former PLO spokeswoman who is now a member of the Palestinian self rule council, made the point that, if the Likud took power, the US might exert pressure for concessions it was not prepared to exert on Labour to ensure progress on the peace front. This, also, would seem to be a false hope because Washington did not use the leverage it had to compel the former Loud government, under Mr Yitzak Shamir, to make the sort of commitment to peacemaking Labour eventually made in 1992.
