Two African leaders -- each of towering stature in their respective worlds -- are playing crucial roles in bringing about a possible reconciliation between Israel and militant Islam. Little noted in the American press, their efforts have electrified the global Arab media. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is an avid reader of the foreign-language press, from Tokyo to Khartoum. His most recent book is "American Soul" (Mercury House, 1995).

Two towering figures -- both African -- may hold the fate of Arab-Israeli peace in their hands: Nelson Mandela of South Africa and the Sudanese imam Hassan Al-Turabi. Each is promoting a rapprochement between the Jewish state and militant Islam without which peace between the two peoples will be impossible.

Though little covered in the American news media, the global Arab media have been electrified by two recent reports. One is that Israeli and Sudanese officials have been secretly talking with each other in three Arab capitals where both countries have embassies. The other is that the militant Islamic group Hamas is seriously considering entering the May 29 Israeli elections by mobilizing Israeli Arab voters. This explosive issue was thrashed out at a private meeting during a recent world Islamic conference in South Africa.

The Sudan, just south of Egypt, is Africa's biggest country in land area. Along with Iran, Iraq and Libya, it has been branded a "rogue country" by Washington. At this point most Arabs identify more with the predominantly Sunni Muslim Sudan than with the other three -- Sunni is the branch of Islam to which the majority of the world's 200 million Arab Muslims belong.

For over a decade the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, has been a gathering ground for radical, moderate and conservative Muslim political figures. Of these none commands greater respect throughout the Islamic world -- similar to that commanded by Nelson Mandela in the West -- than the leader of the Sudan's ruling Islamic Salvation Front, Dr. Hassan Al-Turabi. A foremost Islamic scholar who holds higher degrees from Oxford and the Sorbonne, Turabi was elected speaker of the new national assembly during Sudan's recent elections.

For two years Turabi has let it be known that Muslims must ultimately come to terms with Israel. In part he has taken that position because of the Sudan's most serious domestic challenge, the civil war in its rich southern region which has been festering since 1959. Recently two major southern rebels signed a peace accord with the Khartoum government. The big hold-out is Col. John Garang, long supported by Israel and the West. If Israel can use its clout to persuade Garang to meet with Turabi, all of Africa and the Arab world would see that as a major turning point in their collective destiny.

On the Israeli side, the Peres government may have finally realized that they need Turabi. Israeli Arabs constitute one out of five voters. If, despite deep anger over Israeli mistreatment of Arabs and the recent Qana massacre in Lebanon, these Israeli Arabs decided to vote en masse, they could provide the swing vote that keeps Peres in power. As rumblings from the Hamas delegates to the South African conference suggest, Palestinians from Israel want to boycott the elections. But a growing list of influential Arab figures are urging otherwise. Turabi's voice could give a powerful boost to the advocates of participation.

South Africa has a small Muslim population but the Islamic community there is active in both domestic and international affairs. President Mandela, who is playing a peace-making role all over Africa, including the Sudan, made a point of receiving the controversial Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan during the latter's trip to Islamic nations. Mandela may well have wanted to send a message for Jewish-Muslim reconciliation. Similarly Farrakhan's meeting with President Rafsanjani in Iran, widely noted in the Arab press, may have helped push the Iranians to urge a more pro-peace direction for Lebanon's militant Shi'ite Hizbollah.

There is little charisma left in the world to facilitate a possible reconciliation between Arabs and Israelis. America's peace-making role, long eroding because of its lop-sided support for Israel, took a nose-dive with Israel's recent bloody foray into Lebanon. But Mandela is one of the few world leaders left who still commands charisma because of his ability to reconcile not only black and white but black and black in South Africa. Hassan Al-Turabi has likewise been building bridges in a bitterly divided Islamic world.

If it turns out that the Mandela and Turabi help bring about a Jewish-Muslim reconciliation, they would merit global thanks going well beyond a Nobel prize. Their biggest contribution would be showing the world that, for all their own bloody internal conflicts, Africans have significant talents for peace-making that offer models for the world.