Injecting Realism into White House Is Key to Mideast Peace

By Eugene Bird

An opportunity for talks with all parties to Middle East peace illuminated the interval between rounds nine and ten of the Middle East peace talks for the writer, who accompanied a group sponsored by the Pax World Foundation in May for talks with, among others, the foreign ministers of Syria, Jordan and Israel.

Woven between statements of maximum positions were clear statements by Syria's Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Charaa that there is "no bar" to full relations with Israel once the Golan Heights are returned in full. Israel's foreign minister used the term "full peace" in remarking on what was needed to allow Israel to make an offer on the Golan—carefully skirting the issue of what that offer might be.

With then-Jordanian Foreign Minister Kamal Abu Jabar (who is no longer in the cabinet but whose opinions are undoubtedly still valid), the issues between Israel and Jordan were just three: water sharing, refugees, and, above all, a settlement with the Palestinians before Jordan could sign.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel, commenting on his country's talks with Jordan, made it clear that there were no problems left to negotiate, and maintained that a settlement with Jordan did not depend on settling with the Palestinians first.

The contradictory statements by the Jordanian and Israeli foreign ministers got right to the heart of the problem. Just as the Israelis concentrated unsuccessfully on a separate peace with Syria before the ninth round of talks, prior to the tenth round they unleashed a media blitz on the possibility of a separate peace with Jordan.

"Palestinians First"

However, as everyone knows by now, the Israelis first must sign an agreement with the Palestinians before any other Arab party will sign one with Israel. Only the U.S., somewhat uncomfortably, and the Israelis, very deliberately, deny this.

Both Jonathan Kuttab, the peripatetic Protestant Palestinian rights veteran and one of the founders of Al Haq, the NAACP of the Palestinian movement, and Hanna Nasir, the just-returned-from-exile head of Bir Zeit University, the Harvard of the West Bank, agree that Israel is at a crossroad. The Jewish state can continue to confront the Palestinians and the Arab neighbors to its east and north with military power and occupation, or end its Cold War tactics and truly seek, in the words of Kuttab, to "become a part of the Middle East. " He painted a rosy picture of future coexistence for both a binational state of Israel, with a population including a 20 percent Arab minority, and the Palestinians, who have become the most widely scattered and probably still among the best educated of the Arab peoples.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, a clear split has developed over how to proceed with the talks: The White House, openly dominated by at least two totally dedicated figures direct from the Zionist lobby, is urging tough talk with the Palestinian delegates to bring them to sign what would be seen by many of their own people (and both moderates and Islamists throughout the Arab world) as a document of surrender: No interim self-determination except in enclaves, and then highly limited authority during the interim period over land, water, police powers and courts (a prescription for disastrous strife); no promises on the nature of Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories after five years; no discussion of the present or future status of East Jerusalem; and no American promises of support for the international control of the Muslim and Christian Holy Places.

Within the State Department, specialists on the Arab countries and Israel are reminding political appointees that the Palestinian negotiators have to come away with some real powers for the interim self-government, and some clear promises on what happens in the final negotiations, including those on East Jerusalem.

White House-State Negotiations

Essentially, what happens at the negotiations between the ax-lobbyists for Israel in the White House, who include National Security Council Middle East Adviser Martin Indyk and newly appointed "presidential adviser" Richard Schifter, reporting to National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, and, in the other corner, career foreign service officers working under Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Edward Djerejian, will determine whether or not the Palestinians can be persuaded to venture into an open-ended interim agreement. And what happens with the Palestinians will determine what happens in Israel's negotiations with Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

The White House still seems to be listening more to Tel Aviv.

The discussions in Damascus also made it clear that even if Israel were willing to give up the Golan in its entirety today, the Syrians could not sign an agreement until the Palestinians were given enough concessions on interim self-government and on East Jerusalem to sign their agreement with Israel first. The "Palestinians first" factor is recognized by the State Department realists as the final, and only, key to peace. The White House, however, still seems to be listening more to Tel Aviv than to Ramallah, Gaza and Tunis.

Mixed Signals in Tel Aviv

Meanwhile, Israel is persistently sending mixed signals. Foreign Minister Peres takes the line that the Arabs are really more interested in building a relationship with the United States than with Israel. He also made clear that so far as he was concerned, "the sky's the limit" on the activities and lobbying of American Jews on behalf of Israel. An Israeli political writer commented that Peres was a man who would make peace, but if he were to come to power he could not do so, for he is not a general. Only an Israeli general can make a peace acceptable to the Israeli public.

That general now is Yitzhak Rabin. He bluntly and realistically told his cabinet on June 7 that "They [Syria, Lebanon and Jordan] can't go to peace before the problem between the Palestinians in the territories and us is solved." He appeared to be admitting for the first time the same "Palestinians first" reality upon which Department of State regional experts have sought to anchor U.S. policy to revive the presently moribund "peace process" upon which so many U.S. presidents have invested so much U.S. prestige.

So, if realists prevail in the U.S. and Israel, it will come down to how much the Palestinians can accept in the way of continued Israeli occupation and interference in their lives during the interim period, and how much the Israelis will promise in terms of the final political status of the occupied territories, and of Jerusalem.

Little Reason for Optimism

Members of the Pax World Foundation delegation, including former Republican Congressman and 1980 independent presidential candidate John Anderson, former U. S. News and World Report Middle East correspondent John Law, and former Department of State official Ellis O. Jones, found little reason for optimism that the present bilateral peace talks will defuse the Palestinian problem successfully. Some concluded that it is not a Palestinian problem so much as a U.S. and Israeli problem.

They defined the U.S. problem as one of modifying the behavior of White House Cold War specialists, whose babble about "triple containment" (of Iraq, Iran and Islamic fundamentalism) as the central U.S. policy in the Middle East only encourages hard-liners in Israel to withhold the concessions to the Palestinians that could finally end the deadlock that is at the core of regional instability, the rise of Islamism, and U.S. problems throughout the entire Muslim world.

Advocates in the White House

Special Assistant to the President Schifter, Reagan administration assistant secretary of state for human rights, who was shown the door after he opposed Bush administration criticism of Israeli human rights violations, will now pair off with Dr. Indyk as the other senior White House proponent of the new Cold War. Both are former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel's Washington lobby, which had become more closely identified with the two hard-line Likud prime ministers, the late Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, than with present Labor Prime Minister Rabin.

The contrast could not be greater with indefatigable peace advocate and Secretary of State Warren Christopher and his Department of State Middle East specialists. They warn that the U. S. must not be lured into a new "cold war," with Islam replacing communism as justification for the vast U.S. military and security establishment that has played the leading role in running the U.S. national debt up to nearly four trillion dollars. The key is not to confront the entire Islamic world but to solve the central problem so aptly identified by Rabin—the relationship of Israel with the Palestinians. A great deal is riding on whether Indyk/Schifter or Christopher/ Djerejian prevail in determining Clinton's policy toward the Middle East peace talks.

Eugene Bird is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest.