Shultz in Israel, Assails Time-Wasting Debate : Oblique Slap at Shamir Warns of Lost Chances for Peace; Secretary Appeals for Public Support

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, in an oblique slap at Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, said Sunday that Israel and its Arab adversaries risk losing a chance for peace with a time-wasting squabble over the details of his proposal for an international conference followed by direct negotiations.

“Peace is possible, and our proposal can show the way,” Shultz said as he arrived in Israel to begin a new round of shuttle diplomacy. “But time must not be lost debating over this or that element.”

Shortly before Shultz arrived from Rome, where he attended Easter services at St. Peter’s Basilica, three more deaths were reported in the continuing uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including that of an Arab youth who was electrocuted when Israeli troops forced him to climb a high-voltage power pole to remove a Palestinian flag.

Sees Shamir, Peres Today

Shultz, who will confer today with Shamir and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, sought to go over the heads of the coalition government by appealing directly to the Israeli public for support for his proposal. Within an hour of his arrival in Jerusalem, Shultz sat down for an extended interview with Israel Television, which took up more than a quarter of the main evening news broadcast. He also invited some of the country’s most influential newspaper writers to a meeting in his hotel room.

Shultz sought to inject a new note of urgency into the talks. Earlier, he had said he would not abandon his effort even if it showed no significant progress. But in his Israel Television interview, he said the tragedy of the Middle East has been “a history of missed opportunities.”

“So, here is another moment of opportunity,” he said. “Let’s make the most of it.”

In his arrival statement at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, Shultz did not refer directly to Shamir. But he heaped scorn on Shamir’s frequently stated position that the Shultz plan is unacceptable as it stands but that parts of it could serve as the basis for a settlement. Shamir has sought to escape the onus of rejecting the Shultz plan by insisting that he is ready for peace talks, although on terms radically different from those proposed by the secretary of state.

“Just to pick at individual parts of our proposal is to take a road labeled ‘delay’ and ‘frustration,’ ” Shultz said. “The proposal is designed as a package, and it has to be considered as a package. In this case, the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts. And each of the parts is essential.

“More importantly, concentration on single elements of the proposal can wind up diverting us from the real objective of this effort,” he added.

Shultz also insisted that U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which calls for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory in exchange for peace, “applies on all fronts,” including the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Shamir has maintained that Israel complied with the resolution when it returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt a decade ago.

Peres, Shamir’s uneasy partner in Israel’s coalition government, has encouraged the Shultz plan. Peres, who met Shultz at the airport, hailed him as “a messenger of peace.”

The Israeli government has taken no formal position on the Shultz plan because the Cabinet is split between Shamir’s rightist Likud Bloc, which opposes it, and Peres’ centrist Labor Alignment, which favors it.

A source close to Peres predicted that Shultz would seek to break the impasse by urging the Soviet Union to join in sponsoring an international conference to get the Middle East talks started. Shultz is scheduled to confer later this month in Moscow with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze.

‘Useful for Everybody’

The source said such an approach “is very useful for everybody.”

He explained: “It’s useful here because we (the Labor Alignment) can’t force a ‘yes’ and Shamir can’t force a ‘no.’ It’s useful for Jordan because rather than jump ahead and say ‘yes, we like it,’ they’d much rather see George Shultz announce it.”

However, that approach will not work unless the Soviets drop their insistence that any international conference must have real power. Both Israel and the United States oppose such a role for a conference.

Shultz said he made no headway in persuading Moscow to change its approach when he conferred with Shevardnadze last month in Washington.

The U.S. official has said that what inspired the latest American peace initiative is the unprecedented unrest that has flared in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip for nearly four months now.

The latest victims brought to 130 the number of Palestinians killed since the trouble began Dec. 9. One Israeli soldier has also died.

18-Year-Old Electrocuted

An army spokesman said Sunday night that military police are investigating an incident at the Askar refugee camp in Nablus in which Khalil Jaber Khamzawi, 18, was ordered by a soldier to remove an outlawed Palestinian flag from an electrical pylon.

The youth was electrocuted while following the order. The spokesman emphasized that ordering civilians to climb power poles is not normal practice.

A second youth was killed in a similar, though unrelated, incident in Tulkarm before dawn Sunday. Palestinian sources identified that victim as Mamun Abdel-Walid Jarad, 15. An army spokesman said he was apparently trying to hang a Palestinian flag from an electric pylon when he, too, received a shock and fell to the ground.

There were conflicting Palestinian claims that Jarad was shot to death by soldiers, but an army spokesman denied that any troops had been in the area at the time. The boy’s family claimed the body and buried the youth later Sunday, after a funeral march which turned into a clash between soldiers and mourners. The army used tear gas to break it up, and one paramilitary border guard was slightly injured in the fracas, the spokesman said.

The third Palestinian died from wounds received in a clash last week at the West Bank village of Yatta, south of Hebron. Palestinian sources identified the dead man as Ali Dhyab abu Ali, 40. They said he was the father of 11 children.