TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/040389/04038900.037

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 4KB | 71 lines

NATION, Page 20

America Abroad

How to Move the Immovable

By Strobe Talbott


    Yitzhak Shamir personifies intransigence. Wherever he goes,
even if it is just to his office in Jerusalem, he is attended by
low expectations for Arab-Israeli diplomacy. Still, his visit to
Washington next week could advance the cause of peace if his
encounters with the American President, Congress and the Jewish
community reinforce the message he has been getting back home:
something has to give on the occupied territories.

    Shamir believes that Israel has a historic birthright to the
lands it seized from Jordan in the 1967 War. After 21 years of
Israeli rule and settlements in the West Bank, Palestinian Arabs
still outnumber Jews there 16 to 1. For demographic reasons alone,
it is hard to see how "Greater" Israel can remain a Jewish state
and still be a true democracy. Nor is an Israel whose soldiers are
ordered to break teenagers' bones the "light unto the nations" that
its Zionist founders wanted.

    Not incidentally, those founders -- David Ben-Gurion and Chaim
Weizmann -- detested the Stern Gang that was implicated in
terrorist bombings and assassinations. Shamir was one of its most
notorious members. If Israel refuses to budge on the West Bank, it
could, over time, become just another Levantine war zone pretending
to be a country, in which latter-day equivalents of the Stern Gang
battle with the most extremist of the Palestinians.

    Like all other Administrations since 1967, the new leadership
in Washington believes that Israel must at some point trade some
of the West Bank for peace. The U.S. opened a dialogue with the
P.L.O. last year because it hoped the organization was redefining
the first two words of its name: the "Palestine" to be "liberated"
is on the West Bank; it does not include pre-1967 Israel. As part
of an eventual agreement, the U.S. is looking for reciprocal
territorial concessions by Israel.

    But forcing the issue now will do no good and could do harm by
giving Shamir an excuse to dig in his heels. Likud has consolidated
its strength in recent local elections, so it would be folly to peg
American diplomacy to the more pliable policies of the weakened
Labor Party.

    Left to his own devices and instincts, Shamir would come to
the U.S. with his jaw out, his dukes up and nothing in his pocket.
The idea of a "Shamir initiative" sounds like a contradiction in
terms. His preferred role is still that of defiant custodian of the
status quo.

    But the status quo is untenable. That is the message Shamir
has been getting not just from the Palestinian stone throwers but
from their antagonists in the Israeli army as well. It is a
reminder of the enduring humanism and idealism of the Zionist state
that many of its warriors hate breaking bones and say so to their
Prime Minister.

    So Shamir knows he needs to make a move, if only to escape the
impression that he alone is standing still while events run beyond
his control. He is expected to arrive with a proposal for elections
among the Palestinians in the West Bank, followed by negotiations
between those elected representatives and Israel. He wants to buy
time by avoiding the question of whether Israeli withdrawal from
-- and Arab sovereignty over -- the West Bank might someday be on
the agenda of those negotiations. The Bush Administration will
probably not insist that he bless the idea of territorial
compromise in advance, but as his part of the bargain he had better
not rule it out forever. That would probably be as much flexibility
as the U.S. or the Arabs are likely to get out of this Israeli
leader. But it might be enough to restart the diplomatic process;
and perhaps that process will continue long enough for other
Israeli statesmen to decide where it finally leads.