What's Left After 30 Points of Confusion?

By Richard H. Curtiss

From Malta: "A Real Chance to Open a Process of Settlement"

"I can only add to what was said by President Bush that we did discuss [the Middle East] thoroughly, in fact just only very recently, very thoroughly. And it seems to me we do have an understanding between us that we must do our very best, independently and together, to promote a solution to this problem, a very long-standing conflict which is having a very adverse effect on the whole world situation. We agreed that... we've reached a point [where] there's a real chance of taking a decisive step to open a process of a settlement. And what's important is not to miss the opportunity to do that, because the situation changes very swiftly."

—Mikhail Gorbachev, Dec. 3, 1989

Arab League foreign ministers meeting at Tunis sent a message to the Malta summit asking Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush to put Middle East peace high on the agenda of their December 2 and 3 one-on-one discussions. In most US press accounts from Malta, however, there was little evidence that the two chiefs of state did so. Bush made sure the US press knew he had asked Gorbachev about resuming the diplomatic relations with Israel that the USSR broke off after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Gorbachev made sure the world press knew he had responded that progress on diplomatic relations depended upon Israeli progress on peace. His press spokesman, Gennadi I. Gerasimov, put it bluntly: "If Mr. Shamir is not warming, then we are not warming. " Gerasimov also warned that American leaders "are destined to fail" if "they go it alone" on a Middle East settlement.

Is that all there was? Not if you listened carefully to Bush and Gorbachev at their joint news conference following the summit.

After the weather forced cancellation of the planned photo opportunities, it would have been easy for President Bush to duck all Middle East questions. In the hastily improvised press center in the discotheque of the Soviet luxury liner Maxim Gorky, the sound system was malfunctioning and reporters shouted so many competing questions that the two chiefs of state could pick and choose.

Asked both about human rights in Europe and a possible US-USSR joint Middle East initiative, Gorbachev went into a rambling answer about Europe. Bush, however, made a point of bringing the topic back to the Middle East and then responded:

"It doesn't require joint initiatives to solve the Middle East questions, but we have found that the Soviet Union is playing a constructive role in Lebanon and trying throughout the Middle East to give their support for the tripartite agreement, which clearly the US has supported. And so there's common ground there. That may not always have been the case in history. And that may not always have been the way the United States looked at it as to whether-how constructive the role the Soviets might play."

Bush then specifically cited "the constructive role the Soviets are playing" now both in Lebanon and in "the West Bank question" and concluded: "I don't think we're very far apart on this."

That was a significant reversal of long term US determination to keep the USSR out of both Arab-Israeli and Lebanese matters. That unrealistic American policy originated with Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. It was relaxed somewhat in 1967 when east and west alike signed on to UN Security Council Resolution 242's land-for-peace formula to end the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.

Henry Kissinger revived it with a vengeance, however. He placed keeping the Soviet Union out of the Middle East far ahead of reaching a peaceful settlement to that troubled area's problems. The result was an undeclared Egyptian-Israeli "war of attrition " in 1969 and 1970, the Egyptian-Syrian attack on Israeli forces occupying their territories in 1973, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, 15 years of intermittent fighting that cost 150,000 lives in Lebanon from 1975 through 1989, and, of course, the intifada and Israel's continued military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

The possibility that Bush's words in Malta were not carefully thought out was dispelled by Gorbachev's follow-up remarks, quoted at the top of this article. Both statements, and the fact that each President presented them clearly in a chaotic press conference focused largely on the crumbling of East-West barriers in Europe, are significant. It appears that if the US cannot pull off its present peace effort alone, the superpowers are prepared to work together on the problem. And, as Bush put it, at this point the US and USSR are not "far apart on this."

The words should be carefully considered by four principal parties to the dispute: a deeply divided Israel, an increasingly divided American Jewish community, the PLO backed by 19 Arab League states, and the Islamic intransigents-Arab Syria and Libya with their puppet Palestinian and Lebanese radicals, along with Iran and its assortment of terrorist hired guns. Some of what they ,will learn follows.

In the Middle East: Trying Not to Be the First to Say No

"In the Middle East, the US is now in the absurd position of trying to set up talks [Egyptian-Israeli] about talks [Palestinian-Israeli about talking about elections that would select Palestinians to talk to Israel about an interim settlement of their conflict."

—From a Nov. 6 editorial in The Nation

Members of the newly installed Bush administration were still hanging pictures on their office walls when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir first came visiting, seeking in vain to strangle in the cradle the US-PLO dialogue initiated in the final two months of the Reagan administration. When Shamir let it be known that he wanted to come again a month or two later, he was told he would not be welcome until he brought with him some positive ideas for peace.

Almost casually, Shamir appropriated from Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin a vague four-point plan for Palestinian elections in the West Bank and Gaza. To his surprise, Secretary of State James Baker III seemed to take the plan seriously and began to flesh in some details to make it acceptable to the PLO. Baker also counseled Shamir publicly to give up "once and for all the unrealistic vision of a 'greater Israel."'

Stunned, since his entire political career had been based upon that "unrealistic vision," Shamir then received 10 points submitted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to implement his "elections" plan. When nothing happened, Mubarak invited the Israelis to come to Cairo to discuss the proposed elections with Palestinians from the occupied areas. After the Israeli cabinet split six to six, and thus rejected the Egyptian invitation, Baker submitted five proposals of his own to implement Shamir's election plan. On Nov. 5, Shamir accepted Baker's proposals but attached some "assumptions" of his own that the PLO would have no role in the process and that Israel would expect to approve members of the Palestinian delegation. Baker responded that the US accepted Israeli assumptions that did not contradict the original US proposals. He then passed on his proposals to the PLO.

The PLO on Dec. 1 conveyed to the Egyptian government for the American Ambassador in Egypt a message that it accepted "proposals put forward by Secretary of State James Baker" so long as the PLO could "publicly name" Palestinian delegates to talks with Israel, among seven assumptions of its own. The Egyptians accepted Baker's proposals on behalf of the PLO on Dec. 7.

By this time there were 19 Israeli, Egyptian and American points on the table, while Israeli and Palestinian "assumptions" and US "clarifications" brought the total to more than 30. Although PLO Chairman Yaser Arafat cautioned that "our patience has its limits, " the name of the game was not to be the first party to say "no" to James Baker. Instead both parties, and Egypt as well, have repeatedly said," yes, but..."

If the talks don't take place, the Arab press will say Israel turned down its own election plan, while the Israeli press will say the PLO rejected it. Although much of the American media would like, as usual, to follow the Israeli lead, how Bush and Baker react will, eventually, determine how the matter goes down in the history of the conflict.

The facts, however, are immutable.

Shamir has vowed, over and over to his own followers in Israel, not to trade land for peace. To avoid having to go into negotiations to do just that, he raised the red herring of "no negotiations with the PLO terrorists. " Coming from one of the three top leaders of the Stem Gang, this reached an all time high in hypocrisy. Shamir's followers murdered numerous British policemen and British Governor-General Lord Moyne during World War II, hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children, and UN Peace Negotiator Count Folke Bernadotte, in 1948.

In fact, Shamir assumed that Arab pride, and pressure of the intransigents in the Palestinian camp, would force Yasser Arafat to say no to his own and Baker's proposals. However, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, who knows that no moderate ruler in the Middle East can breathe easily until the Palestinians and Israelis reach a mutually acceptable peace, has begged Arafat to play along with Baker. He maintains that when, finally, it becomes obvious even to the United States that Shamir, not Arafat, is blocking peace, the US will put strings on its aid to Israel—and there will be peace.

Arafat insists it is unseemly for one party to a peace conference to appoint the negotiators for the other side. Further, he points out, no Palestinians can make a peace agreement stick without PLO approval.

Nevertheless, Mubarak counsels, the best way to prove Arafat is ready for peace, and Shamir is not, is to string along with Baker. Arafat is right, but so is Mubarak. It's working already.

In the United States: Shamir's Support Eroding Fast

"Shamir was lucky. He arrived in Washington while Egypt [and the PLO] were still officially undecided about the Baker proposals. The prime minister would have had a much more difficult time if the Egyptians had replied with their own qualified yes. ... According to his aides, he is still convinced that Israel faces some very rough moments with the Bush administration in the immediate period ahead .... He succeeded—at least for the time being—because neither Bush nor Baker wants any real confrontation with Shamir. They don't want the prime minister to be able to cry 'gevalt' to Israel's supporters in the American Jewish community, Congress and elsewhere."

—Wolf Blitzer Washington Jewish Week, Nov. 23, 1989

When Yitzhak Shamir accepted an invitation to travel to the United States to speak to 3,500 American fund raisers for Israel at a national meeting in Cincinnati, OH, of the Council of Jewish Federations in mid-November, he began angling for an invitation to meet with President Bush in the White House. He didn't get it until only a week before his scheduled arrival, however. The administration was testing how far it could go in expressing ire with Israel's intransigent prime minister without in turn arousing the ire of Israel's US media protectors. Bush blinked, but just barely.

It was only the beginning of Shamir's troubles in the United States. In advance of the visit his personal aide, Yossi Ben Aharon, forwarded the draft text of an advertisement to be placed in The New York Times on Nov. 15, the day of Shamir's White House visit. It was to be signed by the individual members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations.

The draft expressed the confidence and support of American Jewry for Shamir. Its purpose was to warn Bush and Secretary of State Baker not to trifle with the prime minister. Then, according to the scenario that had always worked before, after an intimidated president and secretary of state bit their tongues, Shamir would return to Israel and thumb his nose at his political opponents.

This time, however, 10 of the presidents of major American Jewish organizations rejected much of the language in the draft. One of the rejected sentences said that "Israel has always extended its hand in peace but has always been rebuffed. " An official from one of the groups told the Washington Jewish Week: "This may have been true years ago, but you cannot pretend the last 10 years do not exist." Only B'nai B'rith International signed the ad that finally appeared.

The 41 mainstream Jewish leaders presented Shamir a very different letter in Cincinnati. Prepared by former President Theodore Mann of the American Jewish Congress and Hyman Bookbinder, former Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, it pointed out that "most American Jews do not reject land for peace. " It also cited evidence from a poll conducted by the American Jewish Committee and a Tel Aviv University institute that American Jewish leaders and opinion makers were even more dovish than Israel's Labor Coalition. Shamir also received a letter prepared by editor Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine and signed by American Jewish doves. Both letters sought to prevent Shaniir from returning to Israel claiming the support of American Jewry.

Nor was that all. Even before Shamir's departure from Israel, the National Council of Jewish women, which claims 100,000 members, had written him from the United States expressing "distress" at Israeli rejection of President Mubarak's 10 points.

Shamir's worst moments of the visit, however, occurred during a one-hour private meeting with 11 members of Congress to discuss Israel's military and economic ties to South Africa. Present were members of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Congressional Black Caucus, and Jewish congressmen. Shamir denied charges that Israel had illegally transferred US military technology to South Africa, but the American legislators pointed out that Israel is South Africa's largest military trading partner and called upon Shamir to break Israel's military relationship with the apartheid state.

Although Shamir received enthusiastic ovations in Cincinnati and at a speech he delivered in Los Angeles, he was not able to return to Israel claiming the undivided support of an American Jewish community deeply fractured over the question of how best to provide real security for Israel.

In his summation of the visit, Wolf Blitzer, Washington correspondent of the Jerusalem Post, expressed an increasingly prevalent American Jewish viewpoint:

"At best, Shamir has bought only a modest amount of time, and time is not on Israel's side. Israel almost certainly would have won a better deal with the Palestinians and other Arabs if an agreement could have been achieved 10 years ago, or even five years ago. The situation today for Israel is more difficult. High-level US officials point out that Israel will face even more serious problems in the next few years. A deal today will likely be better than one achieved in two or three years."

With the Radicals and Fundamentalists:

"Middle Eastern terrorists with links to factions in Iran are plotting to blow up an airliner this month, most likely one belonging to a West European nation, according to Bush administration officials and Palestinian sources.

—James Dorsey, Washington Times, Dec. 4, 1989

Increasingly, Israeli intransigents place all of their hopes on Arab intransigents. As Shamir, prodded by Bush and Baker, inexorably paints himself into a corner, Israeli right wingers think they see a way out.

Likud bloc extremists like Ariel Sharon would seize upon any provocation, such as the recent killing of 16 Israelis when a Palestinian from occupied Gaza seized the steering wheel of a bus and forced it over a cliff. Using such "Arab terrorism" as his excuse, Sharon would drive the Palestinians in the occupied territories out of their homes and into Jordan. If Jordanian armed forces intervened to halt this genocidal "transfer" of Palestinians across the Jordan River, Sharon would launch Israeli aircraft, and perhaps Israeli tanks, against Amman. When the smoke and dust cleared, the Hashemite Kingdom would have been swept away. Sharon would tell the Palestinians that, at last, they can have their Palestinian state, so long as they keep it in Jordan.

Shamir, perhaps realizing that such an action would invite ostracism by Europe and unending war with the entire Islamic world, seems to be looking for a more subtle solution. If Syrian tanks move against East Beirut, for example, he might move rapidly to strike Syria's air force and air defenses. Even if he did not emerge as the savior of Lebanon's Maronite enclave, another Israeli war with Syria would set back the peace process four or five years, perhaps enough to get Bush out of the White House and a more compliant American president, in the Ronald Reagan mold, back in.

If Shamir can't count on rash actions by the Syrians to set off another time-buying Middle East war, perhaps a wanton act of terrorism, like last year's downing of Pan American Flight 103, would. Never mind whether the terrorists are controlled by Iran, Libya or Syria. So long as they are based in Syria or Syrian-controlled Lebanon they can provoke a devastating Israeli air and land attack on Damascus which, at the least, would derail the peace process. If Shamir had his way, it might escalate into an Israeli war with Jordan which would produce the same long range result as Sharon's riskier program.

In the Middle East, extremism feeds on extremism, and terrorism on terrorism. With Abu Nidal apparently out of the picture, Ahmad Jibril's PFLP-GC, or the Hezbollah may be the Likud's last best hope.

That's what Mikhail Gorbachev meant when he said "the situation changes very swiftly." That's why George Bush and James Baker sometime soon must stop working to impress American Jews with their patience, and start convincing moderates in Israel and throughout the Arab world that the US is on their side, and is prepared to join them in taking political risks for Middle East peace.

Richard H. Curtiss, a retired US foreign service officer, is editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and author of the forthcoming book Stealth PACs: How Israel's Lobby Took Control of US Middle East Policy, to be published by the American Educational Trust.