August/September 1991, Page 7

The Peace Conference

US Aid is Key to Israeli Withdrawals

By Richard H. Curtiss

"A comprehensive peace must be grounded in United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of territory for peace... Anything else would fail the twin tests of fairness and security. " —US President George Bush in March 6, 1991 speech to Congress.

The hoped-for peace conference at which Arabs and Israelis are scheduled to haggle publicly over land for peace is important in the same way that a political convention is important. The culmination of a "process," eventually it formalizes an agreed position to which all of the participants are committed. But, as is the case with most political conventions, if there is to be lasting Middle East peace, the toughest deals will be hammered out elsewhere.

There, in the 1991 off-camera equivalent of a smoke-filled room, the Bush administration and Israel's Likud government, or Israeli successor governments, are going to have to haggle about US aid for land for peace. At the "peace conference, " the giving is going to have to be done by reluctant Israelis. At the "aid conference," the giving will have to be done by Americans.

The administration, however, has most of the cards in its hands. It has solid backing for a tough stand against Israel from the entire European community and the Soviet Union. Oddly enough, the administration may also have in its comer a majority of Israelis. Polls show at least 69 percent of Israelis would give up occupied lands in return for a secure peace with their Arab neighbors.

Israel's intransigent Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, on the other hand, has solid backing from his own Likud and some even more extreme rightist and religious parties at home, and major components of the US pro-Israel lobby. He has lukewarm backing from the bulk of the American Jewish community, and diminishing but still exploitable support from major elements in the US media.

By contrast, Congress, where Israeli governments traditionally are strongest, now is where Shamir seems weakest. If President Bush chooses to make an issue of freezing housing loan guarantees to an intransigent Israel, there will not be enough Republicans or Democrats to override a veto.

Neither Israel's fossilized leadership, nor its long-time hard-line American supporters can yet believe the Likud government has painted itself into such a corner. Always, in the past, some Arabs could be counted upon, or manipulated, to wrap themselves in the bloody mantle of intransigence, even while other Arabs were offering compromises. Thus the degree of Israeli flexibility was never tested, nor was the fantasy of American Jews in particular and the US public in general of a moderate Israel surrounded by uncompromising Arabs.

As Israeli Reserve General Ephraim Sneh put it recently in the Israeli daily Haaretz, "Shamir knew very well why he was roping Syria into the American diplomatic effort in the region... An Arab party would be found to erect procedural and substantive obstacles that would prevent any real progress—and would share the blame along with Israel for failure."

The administration has most of the cards in its hands.

Instead, Syria and the other Arab states are cautiously testing a George Bush-James Baker formula. Sit down at the table with Israel, which has always said that all it wants is face-to-face talks, and then insist on talking land for peace.

What makes the Syrians suddenly believe that George Bush is the US leader who will finally link aid to Israel to Israeli concessions for peace? Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Charaa explained at a July 25 press conference: "This is the first time that the United States is speaking about a comprehensive settlement. All the time, it was speaking about partial or step-by-step solutions. This is the first time President Bush was speaking in his letter (to President Assad) of a comprehensive settlement based on UN Resolutions 242 and 338 and the principle of land for peace."

Another factor is desperation. Neither Syria nor the Palestinians can look for help to the Soviet Union. There's only one superpower, and it has just demonstrated its power in Iraqi skies.

Still another factor is George Bush himself. The Arabs have watched him call his shots, and then play them as he called them.

"I will go the extra mile, walk the extra distance to try to bring ... lasting peace, long-sought-for peace, to this troubled corner of the world, " Bush told a national convention of Antiochian Orthodox Christians, most of them of Arab descent, on July 25. "In the Middle East, as in Lebanon, our objective remains a peace that is fair to all parties, a peace that promotes the security of our friends and true stability in the region."

A final factor is obviously shrewd and apparently tireless Secretary of State James Baker III. When he meets alone with Arab and Israeli leaders, he isn't giving secret assurances. What he is giving both Arabs and Israelis is the feeling that the Bush administration is going to see this matter of an Arab-Israeli peace through, no matter how long it takes and no matter how inconvenient it gets in terms of US domestic politics in the coming election year.

Bush already had warned at a June news conference that, if he felt hope for progress was fading, he would go before the American people and assess blame for the stalemate. This ties in nicely with an impression that Baker has conveyed that if the US cannot handle Israeli intransigence, it will let the UN Security Council deal with the dispute—without exercising the US vetoes that to date have hamstrung the UN.

That's perfectly okay with the Arabs, and even worse than the existing nightmare for the Israelis.

Not an Unqualified Trust

Bush and Baker have demonstrated their determination, but they haven't won anyone's unqualified trust. Israel's Likud government now sees them as the biggest threat to its expansionist dream of a "Greater Israel" since the administrations of Richard Nixon and of Jimmy Carter.

Nor can Bush and Baker ever hope to win the trust of the Palestinians. They feel, with much justification, that over the past 43 years they have been betrayed by East and West, Muslims and Christians, by all of the other Arabs, by Jewish peace groups inside and outside of Israel, and by each other. The resulting blinding, paralyzing pessimism has made them non-participants in the drama, convinced only that they're being betrayed again.

Oddly, all this has worked against the Israelis, who by demanding the power to pick their Palestinian negotiating partners, sought to ensure that there would be no Palestinians to negotiate with.

"We must know who are the people who will compose the Palestinian delegation within the Palestinian-Jordanian delegation, " Shamir proclaimed. "Under no circumstances can they be from East Jerusalem."

Palestinians respond, in the words of Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, "In what negotiation in history can one side demand to choose the other's delegation?" Obviously the test of who is intransigent has already begun, and it is not difficult to guess what the public will decide. Nor will the irony of Shamir's conditions for participation be lost upon seasoned Middle East observers, who recall that until recently it was the Israeli government that was insisting upon negotiations "with no preconditions.”

Nevertheless, it's the penchant for disbelief in American sincerity, and distrust of their allies among Arab parties to the dispute, that offers Israel's Likud government its last chance to wriggle off the American hook. It may yet manipulate someone else to kick over the peace table before Bush can get all of the parties to sit down.

To do this, the Shamir government is counting on its American lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and its die-hard support in Congress. The Likud government is counting also on Israel's fifth column within the American fourth estate. These are such wholly co-opted journalists; as William Safire and A.M. Rosenthal of The New York Times, or Jeane Kirkpatrick of The Washington Post. They can be counted upon to write what they think will help Israel, whether they believe it or not.

It is, therefore, worthwhile to review the positions already taken by the participants to head off some of the most egregious attempts to derail the conference before October. That is when, if such efforts fail, the participants may assemble for an initial session, before breaking up for separate Israeli-Syrian talks, Israeli-Lebanese talks, and talks between Israelis and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.

The Question of Land for Peace

Yitzhak Shamir says he won't give up an inch of Israeli land. George Bush has said a comprehensive peace must be grounded in "the principle of territory for peace."

Who's lying? Neither one. Shamir also has said that although he won't give up land for peace, perhaps "my successor will be the one to do it. " He's saying that he'll bring down the Israeli government before he gives up the land, and he probably will. If that happens, it could halt negotiations for four months while the Israelis elect a new government. By the time a new Israeli government took office, the US presidential election campaign would be underway.

At that time, Israeli leaders hope, Israel will have received all of its 1992 aid in return for initially agreeing to go to the conference. With the US president and Congress mesmerized by their own re-election campaigns, Israel might be able to get its 1993 aid without US political strings.

Shape of a Palestinian Settlement

Shamir's disinformationists are saying the fix is in, that there never will be a "PLO state, " but only a limited form of Palestinian autonomy for three years, with no commitment as to what follows.

Syndicated columnists Roland Evans and Robert Novak, generally sympathetic both to Arab moderates and to the Bush administration, direly predict that "those longtime haters, Israel and Syria ... may discover a thread or two of common interests ... Continued neutralization of Palestinians struggling to survive on the West Bank may be the safest route to a future without war between themselves. " The two columnists acknowledge, however, that "Administration officials scoff at that, denying that Bush and Baker would permit the Palestinians to get shortchanged."

A moderate Israeli, Reserve General Sneh, writing in the same Haaretz article quoted above, provides a more positive view of an interim settlement:

"It is now possible to bridge the gap between the Palestinian position and the Israeli government's proposal of May 1989. Apparently, there is a chance of starting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on an interim agreement, based on self rule in the territories and freezing settlement activity. The very commencement of this kind of negotiation is likely to reduce current levels of violence and friction. For the Israeli public this would be a most substantive change more important than easing the Arab boycott or repealing the infamous United Nations resolution that equates Zionism with racism."

Through all the speculation, the leak-proof Bush administration has been publicly noncommittal. Clearly, what's crucial is whether settlements continue during an interim period, and whether Palestinians have sufficient control of their own economy so that the Israelis can no longer keep them from earning a living in their own country. If a resulting interim agreement convinces the Israeli public, and perhaps even the bulk of the American Jewish community, that Palestinian self-determination is not a threat to Israel, so much the better.

The choice, in any case, is with President Bush. If he links US aid to Israel to a cessation of Israeli government support of any kind for the settlements, settlement will halt.

Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia have proposed ending the 40-year-old Arab League boycott of companies doing business with Israel in return for a freeze on settlements. Such a proposal also will find strong support in Europe. Leaders of the major industrial democracies meeting in London on July 16 issued a declaration calling for suspension of the Arab boycott and a freeze on Israeli expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied Arab territories.

The Palestinian Negotiators

The Israelis say no Palestinians with links to the PLO, and no Palestinians from Jerusalem can participate in the negotiations. The rest of the world seems unanimous in believing that the Palestinians should pick their own delegates, if agreements they reach are to have any validity. The choice is with the administration. In order to avoid giving Israel an excuse to decline to attend the peace conference, it can give in to Shamir's demand to pick his opponents. Or the administration can specify that so long as members of the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation have Jordanian passports, their birthplaces are irrelevant.

What the Arabs Want

Israel's journalistic allies are quick to assign self-serving motives to all of the other Arabs concerned, implying that they will betray the Palestinians without a qualm. In fact, insistence on a settlement acceptable to the Palestinians is one thing all of the other Arabs involved have in common.

Lebanon wants a solution acceptable to the Palestinians, so that they can either leave Lebanon to go back home or settle down in Lebanon by choice and obey Lebanese laws. It also wants Israel's " security zone" back, before Israel develops an addiction to the waters of Lebanon's nearby Litani River, which many Lebanese believe Israel already is surreptitiously tapping.

To remove the danger of war with Israel, Syria wants a settlement satisfactory to both the Palestinians and the Lebanese, along with the return of the Golan Heights. A demilitarized Golan Heights under international supervision would satisfy Syria's need for the return of sovereignty over all of its land and people, and Israel's requirement for security.

Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, like all Muslims, want a settlement acceptable to the Palestinians, along with Muslim access to Islamic holy places in Jerusalem. An international authority over a binational municipal administration, as envisioned when the UN partitioned Palestine in 1947, would satisfy this desire, as well as concerns of the Vatican and of Christian nations. It would ensure equal rights for all inhabitants of the city, regardless of religion, and guaranteed access to all of the holy places for adherents of all three religions involved.

Water Sharing

A major factor in Israeli reluctance to withdraw from the territories occupied in 1967 and afterward is water. This is at the root of Israel's insistence on keeping a "security zone" adjacent to two major Lebanese rivers. Similarly, the Golan Heights, which Israel claims for "security" reasons, also contain the headwaters of rivers and aquifers Israel presently is using. Under the West Bank, which Israelis claim for "religious" or "historic" reasons, there also are aquifers through which at least a third of the water used in Israel flows.

These are the "modalities" which really should be the subject of peace conference haggling. Solutions may involve considerable US and European investment in water-sharing agreements involving Turkey as well as Syria and Iraq, and salt water distillation plants in Israel.

Getting Israel to the Peace Table

The Arab states have been scrupulous about not demanding publicly that the US "link" US aid to Israel to Israeli performance in the peace process. Yet, increasingly, they believe the Bush administration will do exactly that. In July, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mousa told reporter Larry Cohler of the Washington Jewish Week:

I trust at the right moment the Israeli government, even this ... one, will choose not to stand as an obstacle on the road to peace and to reject cooperation with the Bush administration... I don't think any party can afford to be left with the accusation that they are the culprit."

Israel's American friends have been less subtle. Wrote James David Besser in his July 16 "Inside Washington" column in The Jewish Week of New York, " Despite President Bush's recent comments promising no 'linkage' of the issue of $10 billion in loan guarantees for Israel, there is little doubt in the minds of most pro-Israel activists here that the administration will find ways to tie the badly needed guarantees to the issue of Israel's settlements policies."

Coordinated by AIPAC, pro-Israel organizations are mounting a major campaign to de-link the loans from either Israel's peace process performance or the Jewish settlements. AIPAC Executive Director Thomas Dine described the housing loan guarantees as a "humanitarian issue" tied to finding homes for refugees from the Soviet Union. Former AIPAC political director Douglas Bloomfield wrote, incorrectly, in the Washington Jewish Week that since the guarantees are not "loans, or grants or gifts ... this is a paper transaction, and there is no real expenditure and no real cost to the US taxpayer for the guarantees."

According to Senator Robert Dole (RKS), however, the $400 million in housing loan guarantees approved by Congress a year ago, and finally provided by the Bush administration to Israel early this year as a reward for staying out of the Gulf war, will cost the US taxpayer more than an outright gift of $400 million would have cost.

Although Bush said in one impromptu golf course interview in June that there will be no linkage between the housing loan guarantees and Israeli settlement activities, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Middle East Adviser Richard Haass have indicated otherwise. Said Scowcroft: "There would be no formal conditioning but, of course, they are related issues."

Since then, Israeli Housing Minister Ariel Sharon has further inflamed the issue by announcing plans to build still more Jewish settlement housing in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. In doing so, he has only strengthened Bush's power to bring Israel to the peace table, and eventually to a land-for-peace settlement. Whatever course he chooses, this president, whose approval rating stays in the 60- to 70-percent range, will not lack popular support.

Writes Richard Cohen, a frequent critic of Likudist Israel, in the July 26 Washington Post: "So far, it's the Arab states that have made all the concessions. Israel has not surrendered one inch of territory. 'Neither the West Bank nor the Golan Heights has been returned. And lest anyone get the wrong idea, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir vowed once again this week that nothing like that is going to happen.

'"I do not believe in territorial compromise," he told Israeli television. Nothing—or no one, for that matter—could be blunter."

From the opposite camp, Likud apologist Bloomfield acknowledges in the July 25 Washington Jewish Week: "The plan is to put Shamir on the spot. Israel and its friends have been saying for more than four decades that the only thing standing between Israel and peace is the Arab refusal to sit down and talk. 'The Arabs got smart this time,' said one veteran Israeli diplomat, and they're playing the game very well so far."

Granted all that, however, it still is up to George Bush and James Baker III to ensure that the winner of the game is peace.

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.