History in the Middle East has a marvelous elasticity. It is easily stretched, twisted, compressed in the hands of its custodians, squeezed to fit into any thesis of righteous cause or pious grief. But it also has a way of springing back into an inconvenient form, a shape made of hard reminders. Certain features of the past remain as immutable as the ancient stones in Jerusalem--the Western Wall of huge Herodian blocks, the outcropping of bedrock from which Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven, the stone core of Calvary now encased in ornate grillwork and marble in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The stones are cool to the touch, to the lips, to the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian fingers that tremble as they reach out in faith. The people are imprisoned by history. To draw the boldest outlines of the past is to make Israel's basic case. To sketch the present is to see the Arabs' plight.