DIVIDING WHAT ISN'T DIVISABLE; SWEEP OF HISTORY MAY SLIGHT ISRAEL

Secretary of State James Baker has completed his political encirclement of Israel. The Arab states and the Palestinians, each for their own reasons and each in their own way, are ready to talk with Israel face to face. Had all of this furious diplomatic maneuvering come into being following the 1967 war, a quick deal might have been struck. Back then the West Bank was inhabited solely by Palestinian Arabs. A separate state, with some limitations on military forces and other security-related restrictions could conceivably have emerged.

Today, the demographics have irrevocably changed. One would have to be the most adroit cartographer of modern times to carve out West Bank land that can be traded for peace. Half the property there is now effectively owned by Israel. More than 200,000 Israelis have settled in "Judea and Samaria." Thousands of Russian immigrants are creating additional impetus for new settlements. In effect, the occupied territories have been absorbed into a greater Israel.

There can be only peace for peace, and that isn't the stuff of an Arab-Israeli deal.

With the completion of each housing project, the permanence of Israel's presence in the occupied lands intensifies. Evicting a couple of thousand Jewish settlers in the Sinai in 1982 created something close to havoc. Removing tens of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Golan Heights would guarantee unending civil disturbance.

Even the Israeli Labor Party, committed to halting construction of new settlements in the West Bank, has never supported forcibly removing those Jews already present.

And then there are the thousands of Israeli settlers in the Golan Heights. This land has been virtually incorporated into the state of Israel. From a political point of view, can any Israeli government vote to sever some territory over which it exercised sovereignty and return it to Hafez Assad? And then the final impossibility, ceding East Jerusalem?

The Arab-Israeli dispute has inflamed passion around the world for generations. Now it boils down to the division of indivisible land.

Israel confronts the prospect of being forced to talk about the one thing it never wanted to discuss: the final geography of the Middle East. It can complain about the role proposed for the United Nations in the peace process.

Israel could perhaps argue, Vietnamese style, about the shape of the table, but it cannot avoid the reality that Daddy Warbucks and the Arabs have cut a deal. Israel has been dealt its cards and has to play its hand.

Israel is an economic mess. It cannot go it alone. For the first time in 25 years, it does not have an immediate dependency on U.S. military assistance. But perhaps more than any other time in its history, the Jewish state has a massive economic dependency on the U.S.

Although the flow of Soviet Jews has slowed, it nonetheless continues and the demands on the Israeli economy to house, train and provide jobs are crushing. If Israel cannot trade land for peace, then it faces an eternal state of war and will be an eternal occupy power. These factors are compelling enough to the famously unyielding Yitzhak Shamir to signal that Israel will accept Baker's proposals for negotiations.

Sooner or later, Israel must talk about geography before the sweep of history completely predetermines the result.