Washington ? The tragedies and crimes of the past 10 wasted years between Israelis and Palestinians will not be erased even by a sudden outbreak of common sense and humanity along the Green Line. But the next few weeks do offer both sides a shining opportunity to make progress by going backward.

The key to using this looming chance to get back to the relative calm and promise of early 1995 lies in Israel, the Palestinians, the White House and European governments being realistic and modest about what can be accomplished if Mahmoud Abbas wins the Palestinian presidential election Sunday as expected.

In his final days of campaigning, Abbas has demonstrated that grand hopes of quickly negotiating a final peace settlement are misplaced for now. Abbas may have convinced the Palestinian voters that he is the best man for power. But he has convinced me that he is too mired in the past to reach a full peace accord with Ariel Sharon.

Abbas has been swanning through the hotbeds of guerrilla activity in the occupied territories, where he denounced “the Zionist enemy” (southern Gaza, Tuesday), vowed that he would never attack the “freedom fighters” of Hamas and Hezbollah (Gaza City, Monday) and was hoisted on the shoulders of cheering Palestinian gunmen wanted by Israel (Jenin, Dec. 30).

Prime Minister Sharon’s government has let this all pass as campaign rhetoric. Despite the verbiage, Abbas has been tacitly allowed to make campaign appearances in East Jerusalem, a sensitive political concession by Sharon. This is part of a strategic decision by the old warrior to facilitate Abbas’ election and to make him a credible interlocutor.

For his part, Sharon should follow through on such restraint with one important pre-election step and one vital post-election decision:

Israeli troops should be kept away from Palestinian polling places and urban areas on election weekend. Security risks that a brief disengagement might create would be evened out by the world watching the Palestinians being given a chance to conduct free and fair elections.

And the Israeli leader should move quickly to engage Abbas after the election in coordinating the promised withdrawal of Israeli settlers and troops from Gaza this year. Sharon’s bolstering of Abbas’ credibility as president is far more important than the present bolstering of his credibility as a candidate.

It is in fact crucial to reversing the deadly spiral downward that has prevailed since Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995, Binyamin Netanyahu’s subsequent evisceration of the Oslo accords, and Yasser Arafat’s turn back to obstructionism and terrorism in the summer of 2000. Wasted is no doubt too mild a description for the dreadful decade past.

Abbas has even heavier responsibilities to meet. He must fight Palestinian terrorism and eliminate corruption as an officially tolerated way of life in the Palestinian Authority. He seems intellectually to understand that. But his campaign promises to protect Arafat’s “legacy” may now limit what Abbas can do.

Abbas in essence portrays himself as a transitional leader who also cannot abandon the pseudo-revolutionary politics of PLO exile in Tunis and elsewhere. His role may be confined to opening the way for “insiders” such as Marwan Barghouti, Mohammed Dahlan or Jibril Rajoub, who grew up politically under Israeli occupation, to make peace after a future election.

That is all the more reason to start work immediately after this election on the immediately achievable. The nature of Abbas’ campaign and the coalition agreement reached by Sharon and Labor’s Shimon Peres suggest that the focus now should be on getting the Gaza withdrawal off to a good start, rather than on organizing flashy international conferences.

Sharon has indicated that Dov Weissglas, his most trusted aide, will manage initial contacts with an Abbas government, which is likely to include Salam Fayyad, the outgoing, respected finance minister. Interestingly enough, Condoleezza Rice has quietly developed close relationships with both men in her time as President Bush’s national security adviser.

Rice is well positioned to play a bridging role between Israelis and Palestinians rather than hand that task off to a special envoy at this point. Moreover, she could use a trip to European capitals that she may make shortly after her confirmation as secretary of state to begin to work content into the deliberately vague “road map” approach of the first Bush term.

Bush has talked big on Middle East peace. Sunday should open the way for him to act, even if in small ways at first, to show that it is more than talk.