Nothing Without US Pressure on Israel

By Rachelle Marshall

If Middle East peace talks take place as scheduled this October, it would be safe to predict that Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir will share the 1992 Nobel Prize for Peace. It's true that neither man has ever shied from using terrorism, assassination, torture, or indiscriminate violence in pursuit of his goals, but the same was true of a 1978 peace prize winner, Israeli Prime Minister Menachern Begin.

Although the 1978 Camp David agreement left the fate of the Palestinians in limbo, it was hailed in the West as an historic breakthrough in settling the Middle East conflict. Now, 13 years and three devastating wars later, another "historic" breakthrough seems imminent: a compromise between Israel and Syria over the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in 1967, and a peace treaty between the two longstanding enemies. But in 1991, as in 1978, any agreement reached through such negotiations will only be a partial one, and the peace it offers will be a sham.

Just as the Palestinians were shunted aside when Egypt came to terms with Israel at Camp David, they are likely to be similarly shortchanged in the upcoming negotiations. Between them, the fiercely defiant Shamir and the bland and diplomatic US Secretary of State James Baker set up a squeeze play that left the Palestinians no choice but to give up the right to choose their own spokespersons at the negotiations or not take part at all.

As most of the world's leaders acknowledge, and repeated opinion polls show, the Palestinians regard the PLO as their only legitimate representatives. One could even argue that the PLO is better qualified to speak for the majority of Palestinians than is the present Israeli government to speak for a majority of Israelis, since Shamir heads a coalition that depends for its survival on the allegiance of extremist minority groups. Nevertheless, since June of this year Baker has privately assured Shamir that Washington would support Israel's insistence that no Palestinians linked to the PLO or who live in East Jerusalem or abroad may attend the peace talks. (The onesidedness of the US position was highlighted in early August when the press reported that Pol Pot, genocidal leader of the Khmer Rouge, had been taking part in the USbacked negotiations on Cambodia, without a murmur from Washington. And, as PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat has pointed out, the US permitted Saddam Hussain to choose the Iraqi negotiators who met with General Schwarzkopf after the Gulf war.)

As a further concession to Israel, Baker also told Shamir that the US would veto any UN Security Council resolution affecting the peace process as long as negotiations were under way. But when the Palestinians asked Baker for guarantees that peace talks would result in Israel's withdrawal from the land it occupied in 1967, he refused to give any. Nor would he modify past statements by the Bush administration opposing an independent Palestinian state in the foreseeable future. On the contrary. Last April Baker told Soviet officials that his preferred plan for the West Bank called for joint Jordanian-Israeli dominion over the territory—a plan clearly counter to the Palestinians' desire for self-determination.

So when Israel announced on July 31 that although it would never yield an inch of territory it would agree to enter Middle East peace talks, the resulting jubilation in Washington was unconvincing. The Palestinians were being asked to take part in a contest for which the other side had drawn up the rules, could choose all the players, and had determined the outcome in advance. Negotiations under these conditions could only be a charade.

Baker turned the Palestinians' predicament into an ultimatum when he warned their leaders on August 2: "In our view at least, Palestinians have the most to lose if there is no peace process. " But Baker did not say what the Palestinians could hope to gain from the peace process in its present form. Many Palestinians are pessimistic. Mayor Elias Freij of Bethlehem commented last April that unless Israel stops its "creeping annexation" of the West Bank through settlement building, "who will believe it wants peace?" Another moderate, Othman Halaq, editor of the Jerusalem newspaper AnNahar, predicted in an interview with San Francisco Examiner correspondent Elaine Ruth Fletcher that appeared on August 4 that the Arab states and Israel would resolve their conflict and "drop the Palestinian question. And if the Palestinians get anything it will be less than even real autonomy: they'll get an enhanced version of the current Israeli administration of the territories. " With Israel about to spend $1 billion next year on new settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, and the Housing Ministry making plans eventually to house 4 million Israelis in the occupied territories, Halaq's pessimism seems only realistic. Autonomy without control of land or water is meaningless. Even the promise of future negotiations on independence would offer little hope to the Palestinians unless the US is prepared to force Israel to stop seizing land for new settlements. But Baker told Palestinian leaders in April that the US would apply only political pressure, not sanctions, in its effort to change Israeli settlement policy. In other words, Washington will continue to oppose new settlements and urge the exchange of territory for peace—in principle—while at the same time it continues to hand out billions in aid to an Israeli government that considers the West Bank and Gaza part of "greater Israel. "

If the upcoming negotiations result in peace between Israel and Syria but produce only empty promises for the Palestinians, there will be a period of euphoria in Washington and Jerusalem, but chances are it will be short-lived. Sham negotiations cannot lead to real peace, they can only arouse a sense of betrayal and intensify existing grievances.

Another outcome is possible, however. The Bush administration is in an unusually favorable position to pressure Israel into changing its policies toward the Palestinians. Israel desperately needs funds to absorb Soviet immigrants and keep its shaky economy afloat. Although Congress is almost certain to approve the $10 billion in loan guarantees Israel has requested, a number of senators and representatives are disturbed about use of the loans for new settlements and might be willing to follow an administration lead in opposing the guarantees. According to Rep. D Fascell (DFL), if the House voiced opposition of people would hide behind At the very least President Bush should demand major cessions from Israel before approves the loan request. In addition he must recognize a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the essential to lasting peace in the Middle East, and that America's true interest lies in achieving such a peace rather than coming to support an oppressive Israeli government.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. She is a member of New Jewish Agenda and writes frequently on the Middle East.