November 1991, Page 7

Special Report

The True Purpose of the Middle East Peace Conference

By Richard H. Curtiss

“The objective of the effort is nothing less than a just, lasting and comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict."

—President George Bush, Oct. 18, 1991

It's axiomatic that when President George Bush tells the world exactly what he plans to do in the Middle East, the mainstream media explains that his goal is impossible. Then, when he does it, exactly when he has vowed to, the media sets out to prove that it wasn't really very difficult or important, anyhow.

In fact, what Bush and Secretary of State James Baker have set in motion this fall is the most significant event in US-Middle East relations since the 1947 United Nations vote to partition Palestine. The US role in that partition vote set in motion 44 years of catastrophic US relations with the entire Islamic world. That, in turn, proved to be one of the heaviest burdens carried by the United States through more than 40 years of Cold War.

Now, with two generations of US-Soviet confrontation ended, Bush has made it a first order of business to solve the Israeli/Palestine problem that still taints so many aspects of day-to-day US foreign and domestic affairs. The means are at his disposal. His secretary of state has laid out the timetable. Even the outlines of the final settlement can be discerned.

So, if that is the case, why is it necessary to drag reluctant Israelis and suspicious Arabs into face-to-face negotiations certain to bog down whenever the US turns its back? The reason, Bush has decided, is that it is the only way to reach a comprehensive peace while keeping the support of the American people for the four to six years it will require.

Bush takes timetables seriously. He sticks to them, as Iraq's Saddam Hussain learned to his sorrow last Jan. 16. Middle East invitees learned the same thing when joint US/Soviet invitations went out to an Oct. 30 peace conference even though the Palestinians hadn't yet named their delegates, the Syrians hadn't yet agreed to attend all three phases, and the Israelis were looking for an excuse not to come at all.

It was a preview of how the US intends to run things. Attendance will be taken and woe betide the party that doesn't show up for the scheduled three-day opening session, to be attended by Bush and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. And woe betide whoever tries to break it up when the summitry is over and the second phase bi-lateral negotiations begin.

After the breaching of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the Soviet empire, and the UN coalition's liberation of Kuwait, it's a new world order. If Yitzhak Shamir, Hafez Al-Assad or Yasser Arafat aren't yet aware of that, they soon will be. For the Middle East peace conference, President George Bush will be setting the schedules.

Joint Soviet-US Initiative: A Break With the Past

"In the past the Soviet Union tended to sort of side with the Palestinians and the Arab states, while the United States sided with Israel. This did not bring any tangible fruit."

—Soviet Foreign Minister Boris D. Pankin, Oct. 18, 1991

Not many Americans remember that between the Arab-Israeli wars of 1956 and 1967, the US often sought the role of "honest broker" in the ongoing dispute between Israel, armed by France and frequently backed politically by Britain, and the Arabs, increasingly armed and backed by the Soviet Union. It was only after 1967, and the adoption by the United Nations Security Council of Resolution 242, calling for Israeli withdrawal from "lands seized in the recent conflict" in return for Arab acceptance of Israel's "right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries," that the US progressively abandoned any semblance of even-handedness. "

The changes occurred as most of the Arab states abandoned their previous all-or-nothing rhetoric, and began calling for Israeli withdrawal from "occupied Arab lands." This meant only the lands seized in 1967, and not the lands assigned to Israel by the UN in 1947 or seized by Israel during the fighting of 1948-1949.

As French and British support for Israel diminished, however, the US gradually assumed the role of Israel's banker and sole arms supplier. The result was a hardening of Israeli positions, signaled first by a split within the governing Labor Coalition over whether or not to trade land for peace, and ultimately the assumption of power by the Likud Bloc, dedicated to creating "a Greater Israel" by keeping every bit of the former Mandate of Palestine.

After the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, which brought the US and the USSR to the brink of a nuclear confrontation, the Soviets indicated a strong desire to work with the US to settle the dangerous Israeli-Palestinian problem once and for all. It was then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's decision, however, to put a higher priority upon keeping the Soviet Union out of any Middle East settlement than upon the settlement itself.

That eventually halted Kissinger's " step-by-step" peace initiatives, and froze Israel's dispute with the Palestinians and with Syria into its present configuration. Just as Pankin's words signal continued Soviet willingness to work with the United States, the joint US-Soviet invitation signaled the Bush administration's decision not to repeat Kissinger's mistake.

Will Israelis Fly Like Doves or Circle the Wagons?

"The Israelis, whether willing participants or not, are going to peace talks that are built largely on their terms constructed that way because the conference's chief sponsor, the US, feared that otherwise they would stay home."

—Journalist Clyde Haberman, New York Times, Oct. 21, 1991

Early in 1957, US President Dwight Eisenhower threatened to rescind tax exemptions on funds collected in the US by Israel if Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion refused to withdraw Israeli forces from the Sinai Peninsula, seized from Egypt three months earlier. Ben-Gurion promptly withdrew.

Every subsequent US president has considered similar drastic action to end recurring impasses with America's prickly client state. No president has followed through, however, because even though Israel was becoming increasingly dependent upon US military and economic support, Israel's friends inside and outside the US government were arguing eloquently against following the Eisenhower precedent.

US pressure would only stiffen Israeli intransigence, they said, despite the historical precedent to the contrary and the rapid growth of Israeli extremism in the absence of US pressure. Predictably, these warnings began again when Bush asked Congress to defer for 120 days consideration of Israel's request for $10 billion in US loan guarantees over the next five years, over and above the annual package of US military and economic aid which has ranged between $3 billion and $5.6 billion for the past decade.

"If Mr. Bush wants a fanatic Likud elected by a large majority in the next elections," wrote Israeli columnist Yoel Marcus in Ha'aretz, "there is no remedy more proven than to threaten our security. "

The problem with that childish "if I don't get my way I'll hold my breath until I turn blue" approach is that Israel already is governed by a fanatic Likud.

"I will never give up an inch of land for peace, " Shamir has promised his followers. Nor, if he had a change of heart, would political rivals within his own party, like Gen. Ariel Sharon, allow him to. They, and members of three splinter parties within his coalition even further to the right, would bring his government down and try to seize control in the subsequent elections.

Why have't they done it already, since his cabinet has voted 16 to 3 to attend the peace conference? They haven't done it because Marcus, the shrill alarmists in the US Jewish community, and such US official naysayers as Kissinger have always been wrong when they warned that Israelis under US pressure would only "circle the wagons."

No Wagons to Circle

In fact, the Israelis have no wagons to circle. The most ludicrous illustration of this was Shamir's September threat that if the United States declined to guarantee Israel's loans, Israel might have to look elsewhere for a new patron. A Washington Jewish Week editorial compared Shamir to a warrior who, having had both arms and both legs slashed off in battle, threatens to bite his opponent to death if the opponent doesn't surrender.

In fact, although Israelis are more reluctant than American voters to cross party lines, elections in both countries, ultimately, turn on economic conditions. Despite the resort to anti-Arab racist and "security" scare tactics by the Likud, it was the breakdown of Israel's economy under Labor Coalition graft, cronyism and socialistic featherbedding, rather than Labor's dovish tendencies, that facilitated Likud election victories.

Earlier this year, Israeli Ambassador to the US Zalman Shoval warned Shamir publicly that Israel would have to choose between immigrants and settlements. Shoval meant that if Israel persisted in putting Jews into the West Bank areas the US says must go back to the control of their Palestinian occupants, the US would refuse the additional aid needed by Israel to provide jobs and housing for Soviet immigrants.

The warning was ignored both by the Shamir government and by its US lobbyists, who are paid to say yes, not no, to whatever any prime minister of Israel proposes. It's now obvious to the Israeli electorate that their ambassador to the US was right. Shamir's policies have halted needed US economic support. It surely is equally obvious to the Israeli electorate that dumping Shamir for even more extreme leaders like Sharon would reduce chances for its resumption.

Sensing an opportunity, Shimon Peres (who ostensibly leads the Labor Coalition but who trails his party rival Yitzhak Rabin in popularity) already is preparing to challenge Shamir with a campaign based upon flexibility about the settlements and willingness to trade some land for a secure peace in order to get US economic support flowing again.

Israeli elections are scheduled before November 1992. Very likely they will be held much sooner. All that a turn to the right would accomplish would be to provide the US with good reasons to continue to freeze aid to Israel. Eventually, whether initially or in a second election, a more flexible Israeli government will appear. Talk about "doing without" further US aid has about as much appeal to Israelis as a resumption of the Cold War has to Russians.

The Nature of the Peace

“The talks between the Israeli and Palestinian-Jordanian delegations will initially be about interim self-rule for the Palestinians in the occupied territories. Over Israel's objections, the United States and Soviet Union have committed themselves in the invitation to trying to see that those negotiations are wrapped up in one year. In the third year of self-rule, which is to last a total of five years, talks are to begin about the final status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

—The New York Times, Oct. 19, 1991

Apparently Bush and Baker have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors. Kissinger made secret agreements with Israel which conflicted with minimum demands of Arab parties to the dispute.

Jimmy Carter brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and was well on his way toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians when he wavered during an election year and didn't cut aid when Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin reneged on his promise to freeze settlements. Carter's weakness only contributed to his election defeat.

The roots of Ronald Reagan's unwillingness to pressure Israel are still subjects for speculation. Secretary of State George Shultz rationalized it by saying the US had to give in to Israel on the small things to make Israel flexible on the big ones. But Shamir remained inflexible on all things.

By contrast, Bush and Baker have avoided secret agreements and concentrated on sticking to an agenda and a timetable. Baker signaled the nature of the settlement in May 1989 when he asked members attending the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel's principal US lobby, to persuade Shamir to "give up the dream of Greater Israel."

Every administration move since that time has been in the direction of a land-for-peace settlement, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 242. Although the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, postponed the looming US-Israeli confrontation, the resulting demonstration of Bush's resolution, and US military power, only further convinced moderate Arabs to take Bush's Middle East initiative seriously.

As it stands, the US timetable is for three days of opening ceremonies. Right then, the Israelis expect the Arabs to offer an end of the Arab economic boycott in exchange for a freeze on all Israeli settlement activity.

Although for two generations Israel has professed to want economic acceptance into the area, the Likud government will find it extremely difficult, in terms of its domestic political commitment to the settlements, to agree. If it refugees, however, the Bush administration will have the incentive to hold up not only the loan guarantees, but some of Israel's regular aid as well.

This issue alone could result in the fall of the Shamir government, followed by a three month delay for elections and installation of a new Israeli government. Whether or not the Shamir government falls, next on the US agenda is a second-phase move from the opening ceremony to the face-to-face bilateral negotiations Israel has professed, for two generations, to want.

Shamir, obviously, would just as soon forego them now. At the top of the Israeli negotiation agenda with the Jordanian/Palestinian delegation is the return of the West Bank and Gaza. At the top of the Israeli-Syrian agenda is the return of the Golan Heights. And at the top of the Israeli/Lebanese agenda will be the return of Israel's security zone" in Lebanon.

Allowing for at least one Israeli election, and , not incidentally, a US national election campaign as well, the US timetable suggests a year to conduct bilateral negotiations, while simultaneously conduction an overlapping third phase of the conference, This will involve additional Middle Eastern states, including non-Arab Turkey, to discuss the economically all-important question of regional water sharing, and the politically significant topic of arms limitations.

At the end of a year, according to the Bush-Baker timetable, agreements will have been reached over control of the land, water, and civil administration of the West Bank and Gaza during a five-year period of Palestinian "autonomy" under international supervision. Final status of the areas involved would be determined after the first three years of such autonomy.

Baker reluctantly acceded to the Israeli demand that no Palestinians living in Jerusalem would be allowed to negotiate. Shamir's rationale was that their presence would prejudge the final disposition of East Jerusalem. Bush has resisted, however, all attempts by Israel to obtain US acceptance of its "annexation" of East Jerusalem, and the additional West Bank areas it included in that annexation by expanding Jerusalem's city limits.

As it shapes up, therefore, any final settlement will involve self-government for West Bank and Gaza areas outside Israel's pre- 1967 boundaries. Although the Israelis will make strong efforts to keep some of these lands, the Arabs cannot settle for changes in this "Green Line, " which would create more problems than they would solve. Even the automobile license plates issued on the two sides of the existing line are in different colors, yellow for Israel and blue for the occupied territories.

The final status of the occupied territories may turn out to be an independent, demilitarized Palestinian state. More likely, it will be a demilitarized entity in confederation with Jordan.

The Status of Jerusalem

Although the Israelis have made an emotional issue of the status of Jerusalem as Israel's "eternal and indivisible" capital, in fact the options there are even more limited than in the case of the West Bank and Gaza. The city is sacred land to a billion Muslims and a billion Christians as well as to 16 million Jews. Few countries in the world are likely to underwrite a peace that leaves Muslim and Christian residents of the city as second-class citizens. An undivided city under bi-national administration operating under UN-supervised international guarantees is the most likely outcome.

None of these arrangements will be reached in a vacuum, however. It is no coincidence that the headwaters of rivers and aquifers currently or potentially vital to Israel are in the very areas it disputes with Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinians. That is why no final disposition of the West Bank and Gaza is possible until regional water-sharing agreements have been reached. It is here that US economic aid can be better employed, in ensuring construction of dams and canals to divert compensatory water from Turkey into Syria, Jordan and Palestine, than in paying off the Israelis for freezing Israeli settlements in Palestinian lands.

The Reluctant Arabs

"Israel and several of the Arab participants have agreed to the negotiations with deep misgivings, and observers on both sides say that neither Shamir nor Syrian President Hafez Assad would have joined the process except for fear of offending the Bush administration.”

— Journalists John Gosko and Jackson Diehl, Washington Post, Oct. 19, 1991

Given the fact that the Arabs stand to regain something as tangible as land in exchange for something as intangible as a peace treaty and recognition of Israel's right to exist, it is difficult for Americans to understand why Baker has had to spend almost as much time corralling the reluctant Arabs as the hostile Israelis.

In fact, the entire Islamic world has and will retain a deep sense of grievance over what has happened to Jerusalem, site of the third holiest city in the Islamic world, and to the Palestinians. The creation of Israel is viewed, at best, by people in the area as expiation, at Arab expense, for Christian Europe's crimes against its Jews. Even more common is the perception of Israel as a last spasm of Western colonialism, seeking to place an alien Westernized people in the very heart of the emerging Arab world.

Since 1967, however, virtually all Arab governments have acknowledged their willingness to accept Israel as a reality, so long as some provision is made to restore national rights to the 1.8 million Palestinians living under Israeli control, and to give an option to return to an additional 3.4 million Palestinians scattered throughout the world.

For the governments of oil-producing Arab states, who support the displaced Palestinians economically, and who see the unsolved problem as a major cause of regional instability, there are strong incentives to support a settlement. Their willingness to link their economic support to the Palestinians and Syrians to willingness to sit down at the peace table lends symmetry to the peace effort. The Arab oil producers will cooperate effectively in the peace process as long as they are confident of Bush's determination to see it through, regardless of domestic political consequences.

Although in bilateral negotiations Syria can agree to keep the Golan Heights demilitarized in exchange for their return, President Hafez Al-Assad approaches a peace conference gingerly. The serious military threat posed by Israel has provided the rationale for Syrian investments in the military hardware that keeps him in power. A comprehensive peace will result in pressure on the Syrian president for some democratization, and of course for the eventual withdrawal of Syrian, as well as Iranian and Israeli, forces from Lebanon.

Even Greater Misgivings

The Palestinians have even greater misgivings. The original UN partition plan, which they rejected, gave them 47 percent of the original land of Palestine. Now, even if the land-for-peace settlement restores to them every inch of land outside Israel's "Green Line, " they will be left with only 22 percent of their original homeland. They are aware, nevertheless, that if the situation continues to drift, they almost certainly will lose even that final quarter of Palestine to a rapacious Israeli government that has confiscated nearly 50 percent of the West Bank for Jewish settlements and the roads leading to them.

Most of the Palestinian extremists who continue to reject the peace conference have roots in the cities and villages that would remain within Israel proper in any settlement.

The Muslim Hamas movement, originally centered in Gaza, is funded largely by Iran, although it embraces a Sunni rather than a Shi'i fundamentalism. For a time, most Palestinians suspected Israel was allowing Hamas funds to slip into the country and Hamas leaders to stay out of jail in order to split the Palestinians away from the PLO. Since Hamas followers have begun stabbing Israelis to death, however, the Israelis have cracked down, sentencing 56-year-old Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin to life in prison, and arresting other activists.

Other rejectionists include such Marxist-oriented groups as Nayef Hawatmeh's Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and aging George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In the recent Algiers meeting of the Palestine National Council they were voted down by the majority loyal to Arafat, and his mainstream Al Fatah.

A major element in the defeat of the rejectionists, however, has been the knowledge that the bulk of the population of the West Bank would retain its unified support of the PLO only so long as the PLO was perceived as responsive to the desperate situation in which the Palestinians under occupation find themselves. They have suffered 1,000 deaths, had perhaps 100,000 injured and 50,000 imprisoned in the past four years, and their economy is moribund.

For this reason, the PLO finally swallowed the bitter pill of having its leaders excluded from the bilateral talks, and having to select West Bank and Gaza Palestinians for participation in the talks in accordance with Israeli guidelines. As in the case of Prime Minister Shamir's threats to boycott the conference and lose his US aid, PLO posturing over whether or not to attend the conference on Shamir's terms, no matter how unreasonable they appeared, seemed shortsighted and unconvincing.

Secretary Baker already had said that if the Palestinians "missed the bus" this time, there would be no other. Surveying their rapidly disappearing lands, Palestinians actually living on the West Bank could testify that next year, or the year after, might be too late for another conference, even with American support.

Purpose of the Conference: The Bush-Baker Strategy

“The president seeks to demonstrate understandable fed-upness with Shamir's attempt at a Stealth annexation of the West Bank. Bush also wants to reverse Congress's hijacking from presidential control of foreign aid programs for the Middle East."

—Columnist Jim Hoagland, Washington Post, Sept. 22, 1991

"There is only one train in the world, and that's America. And there's only one engineer, and that's George Bush."

—Shoshana. Cardin, chairwoman, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, October 1991

Upon taking office, Bush and Baker informed Yitzhak Shamir that he would not be welcome in Washington without a peace plan. Since his predecessor as prime minister, Shimon Peres, had a plan for bilateral talks with Arab states under UN supervision ' Shamir cribbed a plan from Peres'rival, Yitzhak Rabin, for elections in the occupied areas to choose Palestinian interlocutors.

Instead of rejecting the plan as Shamir apparently expected, Baker and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak filled in the details and accepted it. Shamir, rather than carry through his own plan, brought down his own Likud-Labor coalition government, and formed a coalition with extreme right-wing and religious fringe parties. Despite that delay, and the subsequent Gulf war, in eight trips to the Middle East Baker patiently overcame all obstacles to a conference, finally tying the loan guarantees to Israeli acceptance.

The Bush-Baker strategy now is to step in whenever and wherever necessary to keep up the momentum of the talks, while the US, USSR, and Saudi Arabia ensure that economic aid reaching any of the participants is firmly linked to the peace process. While Israel's supporters in Congress now hope to attach the loan guarantees to the regular aid bill, and thus hold the entire US foreign aid program hostage to a relaxation of linkage, the Bush administration has formidable weapons at its disposal.

US public opinion supported Bush's stand on loan guarantees by an overwhelming 86 percent. If, in the opening phases of the conference, Israel is perceived as rejecting the first "confidence building measure," US public support will remain strong for a continuing freeze on aid to Israel.

There are both Arabs and Israelis who wonder why they should go at all to a conference called to trade land for peace, when the Shamir government already has vowed to hang on to all of the land. The answer is that a conference has a momentum of its own. If Israel is perceived as the principal obstacle to peace, Americans will support continuing pressure on Israel for as long as it takes to turn Israel around.

If Syria or the Palestinians are perceived as intransigent, the Saudis and their allies will be in a position to freeze support for either. If, as a result, none of the parties are intransigent for long during the coming year, there will be peace.

Designed for the American Public

Those who decide that the entire conference is theater designed primarily for the American public will be right. If the US, as the only remaining superpower, is to resume its position as honest broker, it will require a re-education process for Americans.

Conditioned by an AIPAC-corrupted Congress and a demonstrably biased media to take Israel's side routinely, die-US public needs a new, hard look at all of the players and issues in the Middle East. The Bush-Baker strategy is to keep the pressure, and the media spotlight, on the conferees, and bet on a fairly rapid revival of American public even-handedness on Middle East matters.

There will be overt opposition in Congress and covert obstruction in the media. True friends of both Israel and the Arabs, nevertheless, will counsel Israeli extremists, and their rejectionist Arab counterparts, not to bet against the power of the president, or the common sense of the American people.

Richard Curtiss, a retired US foreign service officer, is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.