The PLO's relations with Arab regimes for example, are not as smooth as they appear on the surface. About 1.3 million Palestinians living in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli territories (according to U.N. estimates) are registered in separate camps. The camps still exist, a PLO official in Damascus told the Associated Press last November because the host Arab countries wanted the Palestinians to live apart. "This is what the (Arab countries) wanted and we were not going against it," the official said.

The PLO receives petrodollar funds from Saudi Arabia. Libya and Kuwait which total about $500 million annually--excluding private subsidies to different PLO factions and military equipment. But that does not erase the fact that Palestinians live in camps or that no Arab country wants PLO influence imported. A PLO representative in the group's New York U.N. Mission, who spoke last week on the condition of anonymity, ingenuously acknowledged that the PLO's relations with Egypt. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Iran are rocky. "We agree on the general end--the establishment of a Palestinian state-but we disagree over the means to the end," the representative said.

But in the Middle East right now, the means are everything. "We refuse to recognize the Zionist entity," the official continued. "There is no legitimacy to the Zionist state. The PLO abides by its covenant statement that the Zionist entity has no right to exist, even though we realize that some future settlement might require harmony. But there can be no harmony with the racist state."

Why is the "Zionist entity" racist? "Because," said the official, "it does not recognize the rights of Palestinians or the PLO." What of the PLO convenant's commitment to the destruction of Israel? "That is a legitimate claim."

THE SEMANTICS OF MUTUAL or implicit recognition, however, do not hold out the prospects of an eventual and enduring settlement. That must be achieved by genuine compromise--Israel must retreat from its stubborn West Bank policy and the PLO must back down from maximalism. Neither the status quo which Begin supports nor the status quo ante which the PLO trumpets has much grounding in the reality or the ideal of pace.

But forces are conspiring in favor of the impossibilists and against the possibilists. The PLO, whose status as the appropriate representative of the Palestinians is questionable, cannot afford to risk the animosity of the Soviets or the other Arab states by entering into a meaningful peace process with Israel that would guarantee Israel security. And Begin has staked too much domestically on Camp David and the West Bank to be able to bargain with the PLO and keep his tenuous hold on parliam0entary power.

The reflex in the United States has been to excoriate Israel on all fronts. But it is eminently hypocritical for a country which likes to bargain from a position of strength with its supposedly mortal enemies to condemn Israel for doing the same with its tangibly mortal enemies. Little attention and even less presciences to Camp David specifically and the Middle East generally has permitted the situation to deteriorate at a time when it should be improving.

So it has become a battle of impossibilists. The U.S. has not courted moderates (except Arab monarchical "moderates") on any side of the Mideast conflict. As a result of this callousness, Begin's fears have become prophecies, even if they are self-fulfilling.

But it remains equally important to remember that Begin has made sacrifices for peace that dwarf any massive case of jet lag suffered by the U.S. Secretaries of Defense and State. The history of the Sinai since 1948 shows that peace is not easily purchased; any Israeli (and Anwar el-Sadat) will testify to that If the Arab regimes are as deeply aggrieved by the plight of the Palestinians as they claim-and truly view the problem as transcending their own nationalist and other considerations--then it is time to disavow impossibilism.