Will Bush and Baker Press Now For Israeli-Palestinian Peace?

By Nathan Jones

A cliche of the 1980s was former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban's statement that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity for peace. The truism of the 1990s is that anyone who believes Israelis deserve their present government must be truly anti-Semitic.

Humorous or not, President George Bush must be considering such statements as he contemplates a serious attempt to end the 43-year-old Israeli-Palestinian impasse.

He is faced with a clear choice. He can reactivate the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" for a few months and then, at the beginning of the 1992 election year, hang it up until his second term is assured. Or he can get serious, forget "process," and go directly for peace—regardless of elections. A second Bush triumph in the Middle East would keep the first one from unraveling and reinforce his present popularity.

To help him make his decision, Secretary of State James Baker has already made the first deep probes in a series of repeat visits to America's Arab allies March 8-14, including a first visit to Israel. Characteristically, nothing is leaking out of the Baker State Department about Baker's conclusions, or his recommendations to the president.

A Leak-Proof State Department

Baker has ensconced himself and his three closest associates in a leak-proof State Department inner sanctum. The associates are State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler, Policy Planning Director Dennis Ross, and Economic Counselor Robert Zoellick.

Other State Department personnel come and go, make their reports, and a pokerfaced Baker receives them gravely and courteously. The only clues as to what he is recommending to President George Bush, however, are in the comings and goings to and from that inner sanctum.

After Baker's visits to the Middle East in early March, he sent assistant Dennis Ross back for follow-up conversations. At the very end of the month they met again in Washington with Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian educator from Ramallah. She was one of the six East Jerusalem and West Bank leaders he met with in the occupied territories earlier in the month.

The only White House players on Middle East affairs, apparently, are those pictured most frequently with the president. They are White House chief of staff John Sununu; press spokesman Marlin Fitzwater; National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft; Scowcroft deputy Robert Gates; and National Security Council Middle East Adviser Richard Haass. Sununu is Arab-American. Haass is Jewish, as are Baker aides Ross and Zoellick.

Anyone who believes Israelis deserve their present government must be truly anti-Semitic.

Between March 26 and 28, Scowcroft and Haass spent two days in the Middle East, meeting with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia at the latter's request. So, with all the comings and goings, what's afoot there?

Rumors have it that Turkey will play a larger role in US planning and that Jordan's King Hussein will be "rehabilitated" from the limbo to which the US Congress would like to consign him for seeming to support Iraq's position in the Gulf crisis.

That support, however, vastly improved his standing with the 60 percent of Jordan's population who consider themselves Palestinians. It may also have cleared the way so that King Hussein, along with the Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, can play a role in direct negotiations with Israel on behalf of all Palestinians.

In view of Israeli refusals to participate in a peace conference under UN auspices, Bush is said to be leaning toward a peace conference hosted by the US and USSR in Cairo.

Baker's March visit originally was to be followed before the end of the month by a Bush visit to the Middle East. The fact that it didn't happen on schedule probably is attributable to the unwillingness of Saddam Hussain to disappear and clear the decks for a full-fledged US Middle East initiative, rather than to any Baker recommendations.

If no one in the US, outside the Bush and Baker inner circles, can venture a guess as to the probability or timing of an Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative, the same is not true abroad.

Israel's Likud government has battened down the hatches in preparation for Bush pressure of hurricane proportions. It announced plans to build 13,000 new housing units in occupied territories in the next two years; tried to expel more Palestinians; included a racist Molodet Party member in the cabinet; and invited all Israelis to carry guns and use them, vigilante style, on any Palestinian who looks menacing. All are warnings to Bush that US pressure to compromise for peace will be met by uncompromising Israeli pressure on Bush and Republican congressional candidates, including activating all of Israel's powerful resources in the media, Congress, and campaign financing circles.

Firm Commitments

Just as certain as the Israelis that the action is about to begin are the Saudis, who say they have firm Bush commitments that he will turn his attention to peace in Palestine following achievement of peace in the Gulf. So are many Egyptians, who know that President Hosni Mubarak's political security may depend upon it.

Palestinians, with the paralyzing pessimism that their apologists say results from 43 years of defeat and exile, and their critics say caused it, seem to expect nothing of the administration. Nevertheless, there are stirrings among them about calling elections, both in the occupied areas and in the diaspora, to elect a new Palestine National Council. There also seems to be little resistance from Yasser Arafat or his aides in Tunis to the idea of letting West Bank moderates of the kind who met with James Baker (all of whom are considered PLO loyalists) negotiate, with or without King Hussein, on behalf of Palestinians everywhere.

Yitzhak Shamir has no intention of negotiating away land, any of it, for peace. Therefore, if the US skirts his categorical refusal to negotiate with the PLO by assembling a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation made up of West Bank moderates who have the confidence of the PLO, his next ploy will be for separate talks with Arab states in which Israel will demand bilateral Arab concessions, such as diplomatic recognition and ending of the boycott, in advance of any Palestinian settlement.

If Baker pretends to take such Shamir stalling seriously, it means process, not peace, until after 1992.

If, on the other hand, the administration proceeds forthrightly to the question of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, it means Bush is serious about peace now. If he ties further financial aid to help Israel house Soviet Jewish immigrants to a total cessation of Israeli government subsidies to such settlements, it may set off a round of Israeli government resignations, new elections, and all of the other tactics Israel uses to get from one US presidential election to the next without making concessions.

While the Israeli government stalls, however, needed new houses won't be built, and Soviet immigrants will keep coming. After a winter or two in tents, the flow of new immigrants will stop, and those already in Israel will begin to leave.

That will finally face Israel with a hard choice. Give up the West Bank to keep the immigrants. Or refuse to give up the West Bank and eventually lose both. If Bush and Baker don't begin maneuvering the Israeli government toward that choice now, they will lose the best chance for peace since UN Security Council Resolution 242's land-for-peace formula was promulgated more than 23 years ago.

Nathan Jones covers foreign affairs from Washington, DC.