TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/010989/01098900.032

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 3.8 KB | 77 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 36

America Abroad

Virtuoso Transformations


By Strobe Talbott


    Rarely have the prospects for diplomacy seemed so bright at
the beginning of a new year. High hopes for 1989 are the result
of high drama in 1988. Twice, just as the curtain was coming
down on the old year, a major figure stepped to the edge of the
footlights and delivered a soliloquy intended to persuade the
world that he is tired of playing a villain. He pledged that the
policies he represents had changed in fundamental and salutary
ways. And the audience, including a skeptical American
President, applauded.

    First came Mikhail Gorbachev. In his speech to the United
Nations last month, he promised to change practically
everything about the Soviet Union except its name (and,
presumably, its leader). Asked at a press conference the next
day whether he believed Gorbachev was sincere in trying to
remake the Soviet Union into a less threatening country, Ronald
Reagan replied, "Yes, I do." Coming from the longtime and
unabashed cold warrior, in the midst of his own swan song, those
three words were almost as significant as Gorbachev's hour-long
oration.

    The star of last year's other showstopper was Yasser
Arafat. His performance in the theater of self-transformation
was more drawn out, and the applause more restrained.
Gorbachev's act was tough to follow in more ways than one. The
idea of meaningful change is easier to accept when it comes from
someone with a relatively fresh face and a reputation for
boldness and candor. Decades of familiarity with Arafat's role
as both Jekyll and Hyde have bred if not contempt then at least
deep suspicion. The effect of Arafat's trademarks -- the
kaffiyeh, the pseudo uniform, the cultivated scruffiness, the
holster (empty or otherwise) -- often hovers between the silly
and the sinister. He is the sort of survivor who tends to give
survival a bad name. His longevity has often seemed the
consequence not of constancy but of artful dodging.

    Coming from Arafat, flexibility sounds like double-talk. It
is double-talk. That is often the language of politics,
particularly in the Middle East, where the vocabulary of
straight talk is almost always made up of fighting words. Arafat
may still be talking out of both sides of his mouth, but there
is an important change in the ratio: there are fewer euphemisms
for terrorism and more code words for a negotiated settlement
of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

    Arafat's critics, especially in Jerusalem, have grumbled
about the "ambiguities" of his concessions. Yet Israel's own
position has also been ambiguous over the years. For a decade
after the 1967 Six-Day War, a succession of Labor Prime
Ministers seemed willing to yield portions of the territory the
Israeli army had seized in the West Bank of the Jordan River,
where many Palestinian Arabs live, in exchange for recognition
and security. During that period, Arafat and the Palestine
Liberation Organization regarded Israel itself as an integral
part of the larger territory of "occupied" Palestine that they
were sworn to "liberate."

    The P.L.O. has now accepted Israel's right to exist, and
the U.S. -- in its own contribution to the finale of 1988 --
has accepted that acceptance. But Israel's new government is
steered by Likud's Yitzhak Shamir, who refuses to budge from one
inch of the West Bank. If only his position on that key issue
were a little more ambiguous. The recent diplomatic progress
between the Arabs and the U.S., however welcome, could still end
up being a sideshow to the tragedy of the principals passing in
the night. As the P.L.O.'s leaders are becoming less
rejectionist, Israel's are becoming more so. Israel may be
undergoing a self-transformation of the wrong kind.