1996 Is Fateful Year for Middle East Peace

By Richard H. Curtiss

"We don't intend to rest. We intend to continue the momentum, full speed ahead...Peace between Syria and Israel and between Lebanon and Israel will leave no reason whatsoever for the continuation of belligerency.—Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Dec. 11, 1995.

"One of the ideas Peres put forward focuses on the 'totality' of peace. He would like to include a broader signing that would being in many Arab states beyond the four—Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon—that along with the Palestinians have waged direct war against Israel."—Correspondent Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 12, 1995

Although they marched in political lockstep during the final two years of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's life, his successor, Shimon Peres, is not Yitzhak Rabin. On this simple fact rests the next half century of Middle Eastern history.

The choices Peres makes in 1996 will determine whether Israel subsequently is governed by a party of war or a party of peace. That very likely will determine whether Israel reaches peace with all of its neighbors, including the Palestinians. That may determine whether Israel exists as a nation 50 years from now or is nothing more than an historical footnote. It also may determine whether the rest of the Middle East focuses its full attention on applying its abundant resources to its own social and economic development, or continues to expend those resources in strife between haves and have nots, moderates and militants, reformers and revolutionaries.

It will influence whether any future "clash of civilizations" is confined to a struggle within the Middle East between modernizers and traditionalists, or evolves into conflict between Middle Eastern Islamism and European secularism. Finally, it may dictate whether Americans will be safe from death or injury when they travel abroad and perhaps even when they enter a public building at home.

It is useless to speculate on how Rabin was planning to win re-election in the fall of 1996, and what he would have done with that mandate had he won it. Clearly his widow (and his Jewish-nationalist political opponents) believe he was striving for a land-for-peace settlement—meaning lasting peace. However some of his followers believed he was only quietly buying time to produce a "greater Israel" not much different from that noisily demanded by his Likud opponents, but without alienating his American backers. No one knows the truth, because he kept his own counsel.

What matters, however, is what Peres is doing now that he has been propelled from his role as visionary or eminence grise behind Rabin to leader on the Middle East's march to peace or war.

Rabin's forte was his dispassionate assessment of problems, his mastery of detail, and his ability to manipulate the details to alleviate the problems. These are the qualities of a good soldier, a mainframe computer, and an "electible" leader.

Peres strength is "the vision thing." It was he who sensed that with the change in U.S. administrations the American-brokered "peace process" was breaking down. It was he who authorized his cerebral deputy (or "pet poodle" in Rabin's scornful words) Yossi Beilin, to monitor the Oslo negotiations. And it was Peres who informed Rabin that a decisive breakthrough could be achieved in Oslo and convinced him to shake the Palestinian hand that could legitimize the existence of Israel in the Middle East. These are the qualities of a good diplomat or a computer programmer, but not of an electible leader.

Fate has given the possessor of these qualities leadership, for one year, that he no longer could have won on his own. How he uses that year will determine not just who rules Israel for the next four years, but peace or war in the Middle East, and Israel's survival.

Initially, conventional wisdom in the U.S. foreign policy establishment was that Peres would play it safe by trying to ride to electoral victory in the fall of 1996 or earlier on the wave of sympathy and support generated by Rabin's assassination, and only afterward reveal his personal vision for his country's future. The U.S. would have supported that strategy but it preferred a bolder approach.

A dramatic breakthrough might enhance Peres' chances. It might also give America's "economic policy" president, most of whose domestic programs were stillborn, another foreign policy triumph that, like Oslo I, the restoration of democracy to Haiti, Oslo II and the restoration of peace to Bosnia could give the Clinton campaign a needed boost in America's November, 1996 election.

From his initial moves, it appeared that Peres had embarked on a dramatic course of action to win reelection in Israel (and, incidently, help Clinton) on his own merits. He seemed poised to make both Syrian President Hafez Al Asad and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat offers one or the other might feel he couldn't refuse.

The Syrian initiative has begun. For two years the Syrian president has offered "full peace for full withdrawal," and indicated that keeping the Golan Heights demilitarized after Syria reoccupies them would not be a sticking point. Now Peres has said to the Washington audiences he addressed on his December visit that "the depth of withdrawal will be determined by the depth of peace".

That cryptic formulation has nothing to do with whether or not there will be American or international monitors on the Golan Heights, and little to do with whether "full withdrawal" means to the 1923 international border which would give Syria access to some of Lake Kineret (the Sea of Galilee) or the 1967 border, which gives Israel a thin band of territory all around the lake. What it appears to be is an invitation to Syria to sign a full, but separate, peace whether or not Israel reaches a mutually acceptable final settlement with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

It's tempting but risky for Hafez al Assad, who has evolved from conspiratorial enigma to pan-Arab hero throughout the Middle East because he has conditioned all of his previous peace offers to Israel upon "settlement of all outstanding Arab territorial claims," This clearly has meant Palestinian as well as Syrian claims.

It is this insistence that assures Syria of financial support from Saudi Arabia and the oil-producing Arab states that follow the Saudi lead. It makes Al Assad a hero to the Palestinians, even followers of Yasser Arafat, with whom Al Assad has feuded for years, but whose own case for a fair settlement with Israel will be immeasurably, perhaps fatally, weakened if Israel is able to make a separate peace with Syria, as it did with Egypt and Jordan.

Implicit in Peres' negotiations with Syria are two threats. One is that if Peres does not make peace with either Syria or the Palestinians before November, Likud may win and the possibilities of recovering the Golan Heights in Al Assad's lifetime will recede. The second is that in the absence of a separate peace with Syria, Peres might make a final settlement with the Palestinians instead.

Such a rapid peace with the Palestinians would be immensely more complicated. However, to give validity to the threat, rumors have been planted in the Arab world that Peres is about to make a dramatic offer to the Palestinians. One version is that the offer will be total Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank and Gaza, leaving the 130,000 settlers, their comfortable hill top apartments and houses and their interlocking networks of bypass roads to the Palestinians—but only on condition that Arafat give up all claims to Jerusalem.

Arabs describe such an offer as unacceptable. But it is possible to imagine acceptable variations. If, for example, the Holy Places in Jerusalem's walled Old City and their approaches were put firmly under the control of ecclesiastical authorities from each of the three major religions concerned, and the Israelis withdrew from the rest of tiny but heavily populated Arab East Jerusalem just as they are withdrawing from Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem—the offer might be tempting indeed.

By keeping the tangible offer to Syria separate from the rumored offer to the Palestinians, Peres is implying that he can enter into one of the deals to win reelection, but that both would too much for Israeli voters to digest simultaneously. First come, first served, and the devil take the hindmost.

It all seems very Machiavellian. It also is very much what people who have followed the long career of Shimon Peres might expect. After all, early in his vicious rivalry with Yitzhak Rabin for leadership of the Labor party, it was he who proposed keeping all of the West Bank, and Rabin who proposed to trade most of it back to Jordan in exchange for peace. Peres used that struggle to make himself Prime Minister of Israel—in place of Rabin. But then he was out-hawked and out-demagogued by the Likud party which proposed to keep the Golan Heights and keep Jerusalem and all of the West Bank and expel the Palestinians from both, and keep some adjacent portions of Lebanon and Jordan as well.

Peres the Labor party hawk emerged from defeat by the Likud as the Labor party's dove. But his capacity for dizzying shifts of position so alienated Israeli voters that it took the political comeback of methodical and reliable Rabin to propel the Labor party back into power in 1992.

In fact, Rabin, too, metamorphosed from pragmatic soldier to tough suppressor of the intifada to apostle of compromise, but his course changes seemed dictated by events. Peres' flexibility and deal-making actually created events, such as the White House handshakes that altered the course of the century-old Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

Peres' problem is that in practicing the art of the deal, he leaves the Israeli man in the street far behind. And in trying to explain himself to his audience of the moment, he says things that hurt his credibility later. For example, to convince Israelis around the time of the Oslo II signing that the deal he had negotiated with the Palestinians was a good one, he is said to have remarked at a Chinese Embassy reception in Israel, "we screwed the Palestinians." Such a remark may have strengthened the Rabin government's support with skeptical Israelis in 1995, but it will weaken his credibility in 1996 negotiations with suspicious Arabs.

In fact, despite his quick-silver changes of position, Peres has a grand vision of his own. He believes that he can make a peace with the all of the Arabs that will enable Israel to integrate itself economically into the region. He sees the reactions of Arab states like Morocco, Tunisia, Qatar and Oman to Israel's settlements with Egypt and Jordan as indications that, given some face-saving concessions, the Arabs are ready to accept Israel if for no other reason than to secure the political and military protection of the United States when and if it is needed.

Rabin's vision travels far beyond mere acceptance, however. He visualizes a day in the not too-distant-future when Tel Aviv, not Beirut, Cairo, Athens or Bahrain, becomes the throbbing investment and commercial heart of the Middle East. In his vision American and European firms seeking to do business with petroleum producing states in the Arabian/Persian Gulf areas containing more than 60 percent of the world's petroleum reserves will set up their Middle Eastern headquarters in Tel Aviv. And when Arab countries dependent upon American military might for internal stability or external security will raise no objection.

This seems highly unrealistic in the short run, given the deep suspicions of Israel both among rulers and the public in key Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Algeria and, of course, Syria and Iraq. For the long-run, however, anything is possible if realpolitik is inspired by vision.

Peres' dilemma, however, is that the aspirations of his people do not match his own. Israel has far more than its share of religious fanatics whose messianic visions have become dangerously mixed with contemporary politics. Most of the rest of the Israelis are concerned first and last with security. If their leader is successful in luring Syria into a separate peace, they probably would be willing to reelect him if they conclude that he thereby has "screwed the Palestinians." It is even conceivable that if, instead, Yasser Arafat takes the bait Peres can win re-election by claiming he has "screwed the Syrians."

That would solve Peres' immediate problem, but not Israel's. To turn Peres' long range vision into reality, some Israeli leader has to reach a lasting land-for-peace settlement with both Syria and the Palestinians. If, after a settlement with the Palestinians it eventually becomes apparent that Israel is not going to withdraw its military forces from the portions of Syria and Lebanon it now occupies, there will be no "peace with depth" with the rest of the Arab world. The petro-dollars of the Gulf will remain as distant as the mountains of the moon.

Similarly, if after an Israeli peace with Syria it becomes apparent that the Israelis are not going to return all of the 22 percent of the mandate of Palestine they seized in 1967, not going to share Jerusalem, not going to allocate to Palestinians the same per capita share of water available to Israelis, and not going to free the Palestinians economically from Israeli monopolies and politically to exercise real self-determination, there will be no peace with the masses of the Arab or Islamic worlds, and no security for Arab or Muslim leaders who think otherwise.

Peres may be tempted to seek reelection by making peace with one set of opponents, and deceiving the other. But it will be a short-lived peace containing the seeds of Israel's ultimate destruction. However, he has said establishing a lasting Israeli peace with its neighbors is more important to him than re-election.

Through a quirk of fate, he has the power to offer a real peace to both the Syrians and the Palestinians that both could accept— simultaneously. It's not certain that such an act of statesmanship would cost him reelection. What is certain is that it could ensure the continued existence and prosperity of his country—and bring peace with justice to a region that desperately needs both.

Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report