A Slow Train on a Circular Track To Nowhere

By Richard H. Curtiss

A fire broke out on the top floor of the State Department during the July 15 opening session of the 10th round of Middle East peace talks. Delegates joined hundreds of U.S. government employees who filed out of the building and, 15 minutes later, filed back in. It was the most exciting event of the first week, and no one predicted anything to top it for the remainder of the 10th round of talks.

Summarized delegation spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi at the end of the first day: "I'm looking forward to the day in which I can come here and say, 'Listen, I've got some really good news for you.' But, unfortunately, I don't."

Given the apparent bankruptcy of Middle East ideas in the Department of State, and the obvious unwillingness to pressure Israel in the White House, there was no reason to expect good news of any kind. When Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres had indulged in some pre-session hype about an Israeli-Jordanian agreement being so close that "we just have to take out the pen and sign," his Labor Party political rival, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, punctured the hot-air balloon by assuring the Israeli cabinet that none of the three other Arab states participating in the talks "can go to peace before the problem between the Palestinians in the territories and us is solved.'' Rabin also told Labor Party members of the Knesset on June 7 that he expected ''no breakthroughs" in the 10th round of talks.

An indication of the kind of pressure Rabin is under in Israel, where some predict he will be defeated within a year by the Likud's demogogic new leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, was Netanyahu's demand to know whether it had been made clear to Syria "that Israel will not implement a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights.'' Rabin gave Netanyahu that assurance, making irrelevant Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad's offer of "full peace for full withdrawal." Neither side has expressed interest in "partial peace for partial withdrawal.''

Publicly, Rabin indulged in some hype of his own when he dangled before the Palestinians the prospect of immediate "autonomy" in Gaza as a trial run for a future autonomy agreement on the West Bank. What Rabin neglected to mention to the Western press, but not to the Palestinians, was that his offer was conditioned upon the Palestinians withdrawing their insistence that the peace negotiations include East Jerusalem as well as the other occupied territories. Such an agreement would be as politically impossible for the Palestinians as would be separate peace agreements with Israel for the Syrians, Jordanians or Lebanese.

The Palestinian Position

In an upbeat interview just before leaving for Washington, Faisal Husseini set out the Palestinian position succinctly. "I am appointed by the PLO," he said, "and we are for a Palestinian state, which has as its borders the 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem...What we are working for now is a political solution. ..

"We are for implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, meaning that the Israelis will withdraw from the lands that have been occupied in 1967 and allow the Palestinian people to build their own state, a Palestinian state for all the Palestinians. From our perspective, we believe that it will be the key to the gate leading to regional cooperation in the Middle East."

No matter how upbeat the Palestinians may be, the nature of the gridlock in Israel that has halted the talks was summarized by Israeli political analyst Alon Ben Meir in the June 17 New York Times: "Both sides must accept the requisite of exchanging territory for peace in accordance with United Nations Resolution 242. No Israeli government, however, could survive the ensuing political storm should it contemplate dismantling any sizable number of settlements, even for the sake of peace. And no Palestinian leadership will give up nearly 50 percent of the West Bank."

In the past, a secretary of state like James Baker could be expected to step in with some ingenious, face-saving formula to break the deadlock, enforced with U.S. foreign aid carrots or sticks for Israel and Saudi petro-dollar carrots or sticks for the Palestinians. Now, however, in the words of one top Rabin aide as reported in the New York Jewish weekly Forward of May 28, "The Americans simply don't have a clue where to go from here."

In fact, some of the Baker team remains in the State Department loop. Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs Edward Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, will be the next U.S. ambassador to Israel. Former State Department Director of Policy and Planning Dennis Ross, who arrived with the Israel lobby's seal of approval and became Baker's chosen instrument on Middle East affairs, will remain in the Christopher State Department backstopping the peace talks.

How much of the get-tough-with-Israel policy that inspired such hope in the Palestinians and trust among the moderate Arabs was Baker, and how much was Ross, is probably revealed by the dead-end 10th round talks.

A clearer example of what went wrong was provided by a Clinton appointee to the State Department. Asked by a Palestinian if the U.S. thought it was being evenhanded, the official responded: "Of course not. We are strategic allies of Israel. We are the only ones who can make peace. Can you find anyone else who can do this for you?"

The problem, of course, is that if the U.S. can't do better as a peacemaker than it has in Round 10, the Arabs, like the Israelis, may soon stop looking.