"Mis-speaking" On The Middle East

When President Reagan scheduled a press conference for March 31, the word went out that it would be the best-prepared of all his press conferences. This was because he and his advisors were concerned at the publicity he had received after making a number of factual blunders at previous conferences. Those, however, were in the afternoon, and this time the conference was being scheduled for TV "prime time," when more people would be listening. That gave an extra incentive to be sure to get the facts right.

Mr. Reagan was asked only one question on the Middle East: did he think the rioting on the West Bank "would destroy progress towards Palestinian autonomy?"

His answer, verbatim, was as follows:

I'm hopeful that it won't, because I have the pledge of my friend Menachem Begin and of President Mubarak that they are going forward within the framework of the Camp David agreement to resolve all these other problems. I'm hopeful that we will see more progress on these talks after April 25, when the transfer of the Sinai comes.

The - Israel claims that some of the mayors that they are ousting there are mayors that they themselves had appointed but that they believe have now become a part of the more radical P.L.O. wing. But the Camp David agreement is within - comes within the 242 and 338 of the United Nations, those resolutions, and they have, as I say, pledged to me that they're going to abide by that.

There are several aspects of Mr. Reagan's answer which give cause for despair. Firstly, of course, he got a couple of facts quite wrong. The mayors had been elected by their Arab constituents-not appointed by the Israelis. And even the Israelis were not claiming they had become a part of "the more radical PLO wing"-only that they were part of the PLO. In fact, the Israelis never said that the mayors had just "become" part of the PLO, but that they always were.

What is even more sad, however, than this revelation of the President's ignorance of the root causes of the problems in an area as important to the future of the Middle East as the West Bank, is his bland acceptance of the Israeli version of what is happening there. He answers the question by passing along, however inaccurately, what the Israelis say, as though that were the answer. He gives no hint that there might be another side to the story. To make things worse, he also appears to take at face value Mr. Begin's "pledge" to provide "autonomy" for the Palestinians in conformity with U.N. Resolution 242. This resolution, of course, calls for the return of territories captured by Israel during the 1967 war, and does not specify that this means Sinai only. Yet Mr. Begin has confirmed that the West Bank will remain part of Israel, and he has already effectively annexed the Golan Heights. Why can't the President see through Mr. Begin's "pledge?" He seems to get the numbers of pertinent U.N. resolutions right, but has he ever read them?