Yael Dayan's Visit To the PLO in Tunis

By Eugene Bird

Yael Dayan, Israeli avant garde novelist, enfant terrible of Israeli society, member of the Knesset and daughter of Israel's late politician-general Moshe Dayan, accepted an invitation to visit Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat in late January. Upon her return to Israel from three days of meetings in Tunis, she faced condemnation by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli public, and her own Labor party.

In a telephone interview with the Washington Report on Feb. 9, she said she had accepted the PLO invitation because "I wanted to learn for myself whether there were two PLOs, one outside and one inside the territories" She said she concluded it "is not two, but only one organization," and that "the PLO and the Palestinians have real anxiety about two things."

One concern is "the slowness of the peace talks," the Israeli MK continued. "The Palestinians want to accelerate the talks. And, second, they are really concerned about the attachments of the Clinton administration."

Dayan recommended that the Clinton team "make a gesture toward recognizing the PLO as a legitimate party" to the peace talks. "That does not mean just using clandestine contacts," she said, "nor does it mean that Arafat has to go through the front door of the White House." However, Dayan said, some contact has to be initiated because "everyone is talking to the PLO except Israel and Washington."

Dayan said she was the first Jewish Knesset member invited to PLO headquarters in Tunis, where she had "two long meetings with Arafat, Nabil Shaath, Faisal Husseini and several other PLO leaders." She predicted there would be "no further invitations before the deportations are ended." Although, she said, "there is no relationship in reality" between the PLO and Hamas, "they are both Palestinians and the PLO has to stand by them."

Dayan admitted she was surprised at "the reaction in Israel" upon her return. "It was totally negative. I was accused of self promotion, unseemly behavior...And it was all over the Israeli news and on television, showing me meeting with Arafat."

Her other surprise, Dayan said, was the lack of U.S. media coverage of either her visit to Tunis or her return to Israel. "The American press did not cover it at all, not even CNN to my knowledge. Why, I don't know."

The Frozen Peace Talks

Would Rabin have deported 415 Palestinians last Dec. 17 if George Bush had been re-elected? It seems likely there would have been more Israeli concern about the U.S. reaction if there had not been a much more friendly Clinton administration on the horizon in Washington.

In the three months since "Rabin's great mistake " as Yael Dayan called it in the Jerusalem Post, the peace talks have gone on indefinite hold, and the intifada has reignited. More than 60 Palestinians have been killed since the Rabin government took power seven months ago. During the first 10 days of February, killings in Gaza reached one a day, including three children during that period.

Clinton's Middle East Team

The Clinton administration's Middle East team in place now includes long-time U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis; former American Israel Public Affairs Committee researcher and adviser to Australia's prime minister Martin Indyk; and some holdovers from the Bush administration, particularly former Assistant Secretary of State for Policy Planning Dennis Ross, Assistant Secretary for the Near East and South Asia Edward Djerejian, and Deputy Assistant Secretary Daniel Kurtzer.

The key figure appears to be Indyk, an immigrant to the U.S. from Australia via Israel. Indyk acquired his American citizenship on Jan. 12, 1993, only days before being named special assistant to the president and National Security Council senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs. He is now known as the "gatekeeper," not only for the president on this subject but as well for the head of the National Security Council, Anthony Lake, and Lake's deputy, Samuel (Sandy) Berger. No one talks with the president, Lake or Berger on the Middle East without going through Indyk.

Martin Indyk's official resume does not indicate whether or not he acquired Israeli citizenship automatically when he spent two years there after serving as an adviser on the Middle East to the Australian prime minister. Indyk landed in America as an Australian and denies ever having had Israeli citizenship. However, he was a key, if informal adviser to Prime Minister Shamir on couching his hard-line Likud policies to American audiences, according to New Outlook editor Chaim Shor. Nor does the resume indicate that Indyk's first job in Washington was as deputy to hardline AIPAC research director Steven Rosen. From there, with funding from AIPAC board members, Indyk set up the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Middle East watchers in Washington now are waiting to see whether Indyk becomes an administration heavyweight, persuading Israel to take necessary measures to achieve peace, or remains just a glib persuader able to explain the Middle East in a context highly friendly to Israel, no matter which party is running the Israeli government, or what that government is doing to the Palestinians or the United States.

Ashrawi, Israelis Meet Clinton Team

When Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi visited Washington in early February, preceding Secretary of State Warren Christopher's departure for the Middle East, she met in the Department of State with Clinton team members Djerejian, Kurtzer, Ross, Aaron David Miller and Indyk. She also met separately with former Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis, who has succeeded Ross as head of policy planning, although Ross is staying on briefly in the State Department.

Simultaneously, the State-White House team began meetings with key members of the Israeli delegation to the bilateral peace talks with the Palestinians. The Israelis included Gen. Danny Rothschild, head of the Civil Administration in the occupied territories, Cabinet Secretary Eli Rubenstein and Director General Eitan Ben-Tsur of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Clinton team is seeking to restart the peace talk "process" despite Israel's unwillingness to bring home all the deportees immediately. The two "processes, " one to deal with unfreezing the peace talks and the other to deal with Palestinian expellees freezing on a Lebanese mountainside, now are so intertwined as to confuse even the participants.