God Has Ninety-Nine Names: Reporting from a Militant Middle East.

Until last year's election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister and the return of the Likud party to power, one could celebrate the disappearance of a monolithic hostility to the Jewish state in the Middle East. Thanks to the peace process that had begun with Camp David and reached a climax in the famous "handshake" between Itzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat on the White House lawn, Israel made its peace with at least one of its oldest nemeses, the forces of both Arab and Palestinian nationalism. The PLO even voted to change its charter calling for the elimination of Israel. There is, however, another Middle East. That other Middle East still refuses to reconcile itself to the existence of Israel and views any peace with the Jewish state as an affront to Islam.

This is the Middle East of Khomeini-inspired fundamentalism, the subject of New York Times reporter Judith Miller's indispensable volume. In examining the status of fundamentalism in ten Islamic countries, Miller concludes that there is no Muslim Comintern or "Khomeintern." Rather, as the book's title suggests, Islam takes many forms throughout the region and is far from being the monolithic movement that is suggested by a cursory reading of the press. That's the good news. The bad news is that, regardless of the differences among Sunni and Shiite Muslims, those who identify with Islamic fundamentalism agree that Israel must be destroyed.

Miller describes how in Lebanon she found children, no more than five or six years old, being taught the virtues of martyrdom and being told that in the war against Israel "when they are older, they may have the honor of dying for Islam." In Syria, Miller is given a handbook for teachers instructing them to tell their students that the "liberation of the land occupied in 1967" was an "intermediate goal." In Damascus, she found non-Syrian militant Islamic groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad given protection by the Syrian government. One Israeli official told Miller in October 1994, less than three months before President Bill Clinton's meeting with Syria's President Assad, that orders for a suicide bomber to blow up a bus in the streets of Tel Aviv during the morning rush hour had been issued from Damascus. Although Assad may one day meaningfully negotiate with Israel, Miller tells us that it is more than the return of the Golan Heights that prevents him from making peace with the Jewish state.

How could the leader who, in 1966, declared that Syria would never call for nor accept peace, that he would "drench this land with our blood to oust you aggressors, and throw you into the sea for good," now cozy up to Washington and fly the Israeli flag in Damascus? Preparing Syrians for the reversal of what had been an ideological pillar of his Baathist regime would not be easy.

Despite Syria's intransigence and Iran's promotion of terrorism, the major change in the Middle East since the peace process unfolded is that Israel is not alone in fighting militant Islam. Iran's effort to export its Islamic revolution has succeeded only in the Sudan, Miller points out. Israel is, de facto, allied with the Saudis, the Egyptians, and other Arab countries in confronting the efforts of Hezbollah and other groups to overthrow Arab regimes and in the process destroy the normalization of relations between Israel and her neighbors.

Does Likud's victory and its subsequent hard line toward the Palestinians mean that Israel has squandered an opportunity to build on the changes the Oslo Accords brought about in the region's political climate? Miller's book was written before the recent elections in Israel, but the tone of her argument suggests that for Israel to renege on the agreements reached at Oslo concerning the autonomy of the West Bank would result in a major victory for Islamic extremists and a renewal of the potent linkage between religious zealotry and nationalism in a common front against the Jewish state.

Israelis may have forgotten that prior to the Rabin-led peace process, it was waging a battle against both Arab nationalism and Muslim fundamentalism. After the Oslo Accords, two distinct attitudes arose in regard to the Jewish state: one willing to accept the legitimacy of Israel and the other even more committed to destroying it. The Bush-Baker plan of "land for peace" attracted the pragmatic Rabin for principally two reasons. Against the background of the intifada, Rabin realized that negotiations with the Palestinians without the PLO would go nowhere. He also understood the currents of Islamic fundamentalism and the growing appeal of groups such as Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. Miller concludes that Rabin believed that, if some kind of agreement were not reached with the PLO, the forces of militant Islam were waiting in the wings to take over the fight against Israel.

For the PLO the road to Madrid and Oslo was equally difficult. The breakup of the Soviet Union had left the PLO without a major power as sponsor. In addition, the PLO had sided with Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War, and as a consequence the Saudis cut off aid to the organization. It was also apparent that the intifada was not under the direction or control of the PLO. From his headquarters in Tunis, Arafat watched Hamas attempt to take over the leadership of the intifada and appeal to the younger generation of Palestinians. Arafat concluded that the Palestinian movement was slowly slipping away from the PLO. Thus, despite the Palestine National Covenant, which has traditionally rejected the legitimacy of the Jewish state and, in fact, has called for its destruction, Arafat moved an uncertain PLO into the peace process. Of course as the negotiations unfolded, it became clear that Rabin and Arafat had different expectations. For Arafat, the process would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. Rabin gambled that the negotiations would lead to autonomy for the Palestinians but not statehood, which he believed would have a destabilizing effect on the region. Yet by September 1995, the Rabin government had agreed to cede Palestinian autonomy to most of the Arab-populated cities in the West Bank. Under the new Likud government, this commitment to Palestinian autonomy would seem to be on hold. If so, the future of the peace process is in doubt.

Future peace will depend on both the policies of the Likud government and on which of the two faces of the Middle East triumphs in the struggle for the hearts and minds of millions of Arabs. It is apparent from Miller's book that thanks to the Oslo Accords Israel had acquired Arab partners for peace and was no longer a pariah in the region. Can that partnership survive the current confrontational period? If it does not, the forces of militant Islam will be waiting.

Jack Fischel teaches history at Millersville University in Pennsylvania.