The public can expect a showdown Wednesday as work resumes on the Thirty Meter Telescope. The conflict looms with an implicit warning: Both sides in this fight must not jockey for short-term advantages. Such gains are sure to produce the worst final outcomes for everyone.

State and county officials seeking to enforce the permit allowing crews on-site for the controversial $1.4 billion Mauna Kea project face a difficult challenge. The onus is on them to protect the crews’ rightful access without allowing the conflict to escalate.

In April, social media fueled the initial protest by Native Hawaiian "protector" groups opposing the telescope project. It drew a rush of offshore supporters, and the arrests of 31 on the mountain raised its profile even further.

The goal of authorities should be to avoid a repeat performance. Protesters have pledged "kapu aloha" (nonviolent protest), and law enforcement must adopt a similar stance.

For their part, the protesters need to consider carefully the gains they’ve already made in the movement to protect Mauna Kea, considered a sacred place within Hawaiian culture. TMT opponents already have persuaded many people that the state has provided inadequate stewardship of the mountain.

They have the ear of the governor, who pushed to reduce the footprint of development on the mountain by removing the obsolete telescopes. Gov. David Ige is appealing to the University of Hawaii scientific community to fulfill the decommissioning plan that was adopted but seems to have been back-burnered.

The summit is part of the former crown and government lands ceded to the U.S. following the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom, and Native Hawaiians have a legal stake in it. The TMT group, however, was granted its state permit to build after a painstaking, seven-year process of environmental studies, public hearings and court proceedings.

Over those years, the entire debate over Mauna Kea has expanded from ecological concerns — the preservation of endangered species, such as the wekiu bug that lives in that rarefied environment — to an increased recognition that the spirituality of the site merits protection, too. That is no small achievement, but if no middle ground is found here, public resentment is likely to build.

That middle ground lies firmly in the fact that the summit has not been pristine for decades, and some of the existing telescopes are likely to remain for some time. It would seem a wiser bargain to accept a state-of-the-art facility as the final development atop Mauna Kea and begin restoring parts of the scientific zone to a more natural state.

The TMT is large, 18 stories in height, but the educational and technological advances it offers more than compensate. There are many in the general public, and within the Native Hawaiian community, who don’t see the project as a sacrilege, and their perspective matters, too.

Sacrificing this project would be a scientific and economic loss to the wider community. Native Hawaiians, of course, benefit from the opportunity to do cultural outreach and receive education.

Following a standoff of more than two months, Henry Yang, chairman of the TMT International Observatory board, issued a statement indicating a shift in perspective.

"Our period of inactivity has made us a better organization in the long run," Yang said. "We are now comfortable that we can be better stewards and better neighbors during our temporary and limited use of this precious land, which will allow us to explore the heavens and broaden the boundaries of science in the interest of humanity.

"In an effort to be sensitive to and observant of the Native Hawaiian host culture, we will deepen our knowledge of the cultural, ecological, and spiritual aspects of the mountain and continue to learn how to better respect and appreciate Mauna Kea’s important cultural areas."

That signals a potential for accord, if the opponents can amend their no-compromise stance. In the end, intransigence will not further the larger cause of Native Hawaiian advancement, but only increase ire among Hawaii’s community at large.