The Big Stall

Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir says that he won’t be rushed into giving an answer to the U.S. plan for Middle Eastern peace talks. Shamir insists that he must have more time to “clarify” the proposals made by Secretary of State George P. Shultz. Well, why not? After all, it has been only nine years since Israel signed the Camp David agreements. It has been only 14 years since it accepted U.N. Security Council Resolution 338. It has been no more than 21 years since it agreed to Security Council Resolution 242 with its idea to trade land for peace. Every key point of Shultz’s proposal is based on these previously made commitments . There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the plan that he carried to Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Syria that any party can claim is new or unexpected.

Shamir nonetheless seeks to delay Israel’s response by professing a need for further explanations. In so doing he makes a farce out of responsible statecraft. On Sunday he refused to allow Israel’s Cabinet to vote on the Shultz plan, recognizing that the divided government’s inability to agree would be tantamount to a rejection that would leave Israel at blame for killing an effort that Jordan and Egypt at least say has merit. On Wednesday Israel’s 10-member Inner Cabinet is to vote on an answer to the Shultz plan, but the even split between its Labor and Likud representatives almost certainly will produce another non-decision. So Shamir will go to Washington next week happily unburdened by any Israeli answer.

These transparent stalling tactics have already provoked unprecedented American condemnation with 30 senators, among them many of Israel’s most consistent supporters, signing a letter to Shultz criticizing the Shamir faction’s efforts to obstruct peace talks. This extraordinary bipartisan departure into public criticism suggests a watershed in Israel’s political standing with Congress. The senators threatened nothing. But their discontent with Shamir and what he stands for has been made clear. Israel cannot afford to ignore the future implications of this impatience and anger.

What that future can be expected to look like, in the absence of progress to reduce tensions, can be seen once more in this morning’s headlines. In the occupied territories Arab violence provokes yet greater violence from the Israelis. In Israel itself an Arab terrorist band has managed to penetrate to the very heart of the Negev, there to carry out the murder of civilians. Extremists in both Israel and the Arab world can be counted on to cite these events as justification for their own intransigent views. Others, though, will properly see in them a grim foreshadowing of the grief that is to come if yet again the chance for political moderation and compromise is rejected.