TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/080591/0805000.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 10.2 KB | 222 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 28

COVER STORIES

MIDDLE EAST

What Are These Two Up To?


With Assad now willing to attend a regional peace conference,
Shamir faces heavy pressure, especially from the U.S., to go
along

By BRUCE W. NELAN -- Reported by Dean Fischer/Cairo, Christopher
Ogden with Baker and Robert Slater/Jerusalem


    When the gulf war ended in March, Washington had high
hopes that the allied victory would provide the momentum for
Arabs and Israelis to seek a broader peace. But that expectation
quickly curdled into disappointment as George Bush discovered
both sides still clung to conditions that precluded talks. Bush
sounded less than confident last spring, when he dispatched
Secretary of State James Baker to Israel and its Arab neighbors
on a round of exploratory diplomacy. "It's the Baker plan," the
President joked. "If it works, we'll call it the Bush plan."

    Both of them, in fact, applied steady pressure and
persuasion, and last week Israel, the final holdout, seemed
closer than ever to agreeing to a regional peace conference.
Whether the initiative is named for Bush or Baker hardly
matters. If it succeeds, it will be because it is American by
birth. The U.S. is the world's only fully functioning superpower
and the only likely source of rewards for good international
behavior. So the states of the region must calculate not only
what it could cost them to say no to Washington but also how it
might profit them to say yes.

    Baker arrived in Israel again last week after a visit to
Syria, where he picked up President Hafez Assad's formal
acceptance of Washington's proposal for a conference. Jordan and
Lebanon had also quickly fallen into line. Egypt was on board
from the start, and Saudi Arabia and the gulf states had
promised to join talks on regional problems such as water
supplies and arms control.

    The pressure is now on Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. He
balked at U.S. efforts early last year, but since then the Arabs
have come a long way toward meeting Israeli preconditions. The
conference would be sponsored not by the United Nations but by
the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It would convene once, then break
up into four groups for direct negotiations among Israel, the
Palestinians and the Arab states.

    "For 43 years," Baker said in Jerusalem, "Israel has
sought direct negotiations with its neighbors, and it has been
right to do so. Now there is a real opportunity to get to those
face-to-face negotiations." He said he had not given Shamir a
deadline for his response but hoped to get an answer before this
week's U.S.-Soviet summit in Moscow. Bush and President Mikhail
Gorbachev were thinking of issuing invitations from the summit
to an October peace conference.

    In his talks with Baker, Shamir raised the question of who
would represent the Palestinians at the conference, the same
issue that led to the fall of the Israeli government of national
unity in March 1990, and threw the Labor Party into opposition.
Israel adamantly refuses to sit down with Palestinians from East
Jerusalem for fear of signaling that the area, won in the 1967
war and now annexed to Jewish West Jerusalem, is open to
negotiation.

    But Shamir also said publicly that Syria's agreement to
talk has altered the Middle East equation. "For the first
time," he said, "the President of Syria is ready to negotiate
with Israel." At a meeting with visiting American district
attorneys, Shamir sounded even more upbeat: "As the situation
stands now, I think that we are approaching the beginning of
negotiations."



    INSIDE SHAMIR'S MIND

    The usually inflexible Shamir faces a decision that is
existential as well as strategic. He cannot put Israel, the
refuge of the Jewish people, in danger by compromising its
security. Neither can he pass up a real opportunity to create
a peace that could enhance the nation's safety. He would like
to get far enough into negotiations to examine his prospects but
also leave himself a way out if pressures get too heavy.

    In the past, Shamir had no appetite for talks. He was
determined not to give up "one square inch" of occupied
territory in return for peace with the Arabs. He even opposed
the 1978 Camp David settlement with Egypt. Now, says Ehud
Olmert, director of the government press office, the Prime
Minister can take a chance. "Shamir has no problem," Olmert
says. "We're not talking about giving up Jewish settlements on
the West Bank. We're not talking about giving up Jerusalem."

    Israel can score some gains simply by going to the table.
Most important would be its irrevocable recognition by the
Arabs as a legitimate actor in the affairs of the Middle East.
To carry out its role as cosponsor, the U.S.S.R. would also
have to restore diplomatic relations with Israel. Over and
above those considerations, Israel would strengthen rather than
damage its alliance with the U.S., where impatience with its
obstructionism has often run high. Israel's request for a $10
billion loan guarantee to resettle immigrants from the Soviet
Union and Ethiopia would be certain to sail through Congress.

    The Arabs have let Shamir arrange the chairs at the
conference to suit himself. All sides have accepted the idea
that the peace process will move in stages, with the first one
intended to provide Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza with
local self-government, not an independent state. The Palestine
Liberation Organization is ruled out of the talks, and, if
Shamir has his way, overt representatives of East Jerusalem will
be too. The peace conference will serve only to start bilateral
talks and will have no authority to make decisions.

    For its part, Israel is not required by Bush's proposal to
agree to trade any territory for peace or to halt its
construction of new settlements on the West Bank. "I don't
believe in territorial compromise," Shamir insisted last week.
Baker delivered an Arab offer to suspend the 43-year economic
boycott of Israel in return for putting the settlements on hold.
Jerusalem rejected it.

    Shamir's credo is that Arabs hate Israelis until proved
otherwise. This belief impels him to seek concrete evidence of
Syria's sincerity, something he can obtain only by moving to the
peace table. His instinct is to delay, but he fears that he
might squander the best chance Israel has seen to make peace.
"We must start negotiations," Shamir said Friday, "and we want
to start them now."



    INSIDE ASSAD'S MIND

    Syria's President was the linchpin for the peace process
and the toughest Arab leader for Washington to persuade. He is
also, says William Quandt of the Brookings Institution, "a great
realist." When the cold war ended and the Soviet Union fell into
disarray, Assad could no longer count on modern weapons and
economic support from Moscow, and his dreams of achieving
strategic parity with Israel faded.

    During the gulf war, Assad moved closer to Washington and
the moderate Arabs by joining the alliance against Iraq. For
his efforts, he received major subsidies from Saudi Arabia --
at least $2.5 billion so far -- and a nod of acceptance from
the U.S. as he completed his domination of Lebanon and disarmed
the rival militias. Whatever threat Lebanon's civil war might
have posed to Syrian hegemony is now gone.

    Assad can see that he has little or no chance of forcibly
taking back the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967
war. The last slight hope for Soviet support for another war
was snuffed out by a personal message Assad received from
Gorbachev early in July. Its proposals, almost identical with
those Bush had made, strongly reinforced U.S. arguments. Soviet
officials delicately avoid calling it pressure, but one
explains, "Gorbachev just sent a letter expressing our feeling
that cooperation with the U.S. would be constructive and
important."

    The clincher in Assad's decision to sit down with Israel
may have been the way Bush explained the U.S. role. First get
to the peace conference, said Bush; give Shamir his procedural
points. But once negotiations begin, the U.S. and the Soviets
are committed to follow through to a comprehensive settlement.
Washington's foundations for the settlement, Bush reiterated,
are Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which call on
Israel to trade land it has occupied since 1967 for security
guarantees from the Arab states. In the U.S. view, the West
Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem are all
negotiable.

    Assad undoubtedly realized that he was playing into
Israel's hands by hanging back. Shamir had no need to say yes,
and Washington had no leverage on Israel's decision until Syria
agreed to the conference. Now Assad has focused the pressure on
Israel.

    As soon as this week's summit winds up in Moscow, Baker
will fly back to Jerusalem to finesse the last Israeli
objections and preconditions. Most Middle East experts believe
that Shamir will acquiesce and that the regional conference will
convene in a few months. That would be a step toward the peace
process but nothing close to an overall solution. Once the
bilateral negotiations begin, Israel may go along with autonomy
for Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza. But Shamir vows to
oppose any territorial concessions, offering only what he calls
"peace for peace."

    That stance will bring Israel under intense pressure from
its negotiating partners, the conference co-sponsors and world
opinion. The question then would be whether the Israelis can
stonewall indefinitely or will be forced to consider such
options as demilitarizing the Golan Heights and allowing
international supervision in parts of Jerusalem.

    Rethinking of that sort has no place in Shamir's strategy,
so he might already be pondering how to derail the negotiations
if pressure to make concessions becomes overwhelming. One way
for him to bail out would be to arrange for several hard-liners
to resign from his governing coalition, causing its collapse.
That would produce an Israeli election just as the U.S. goes
into its own presidential year, when American politicians are
even less eager than usual to try to coerce Israel.