Shultz Presses Israeli Leaders on Peace Plan : Invites Shamir, Peres to ‘Put Flesh on the Bones’ of His Ideas, Says Doubts Can Be Resolved Later

Secretary of State George P. Shultz met separately Monday with the leaders of Israel’s divided coalition government, inviting them to help him “put flesh on the bones” of his Middle East peace initiative.

A senior State Department official said Shultz told the Israelis that their doubts about certain aspects of the proposal could be resolved when the remaining details are filled in.

“You can’t dismember the skeleton, but you have to put flesh on the bones,” the official, who declined to be identified by name, quoted Shultz as saying.

American and Israeli officials both said Shultz sought to shift the focus of the talks to matters on which there was basic agreement instead of concentrating on the continuing dispute over an international conference. Shultz proposes such a conference to get direct negotiations started between Israel and its Arab adversaries, but Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is adamantly opposed to the plan.

Avi Pazner, Shamir’s chief spokesman, said that in their two hours of talks, Shultz and Shamir emphasized “those areas on which there is more convergence of views.”

In addition to Shamir, leader of the rightist Likud Bloc, Shultz met with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, leader of the centrist Labor Alignment, and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, also a Labor Party official but a political rival of Peres. The Israeli government is evenly split between the two major parties.

Peres, who supports the Shultz plan, endorsed Shultz’s strategy of trying to overwhelm Shamir’s objections with discussion of substantive details.

“Maybe the more we shall go into details, the less threatening will be the first step on this very long road,” Peres said.

Although he already has Peres’ approval, Shultz also discussed details of the plan with him, at one point sending out for maps to permit a closer examination of the geography of the West Bank.

Another Israeli official said Shultz was trying to “diffuse some of the mutual suspicion” about the plan that has built up among Israelis and Arabs.

The atmosphere of Shultz’s meetings shifted dramatically from the confrontational tone that marked his arrival in Israel on Sunday. Shultz said then that there was an urgent need to move quickly, and he complained that some individuals--an apparent reference to Shamir--were wasting time by “debating over this or that element” of the proposal.

But on Monday, according to officials on both sides, Shultz was ready to take up the plan element by element.

The U.S. official said Shamir was “less negative” than he had been previously about the Shultz proposal for interlocking negotiations over interim and final solutions for the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“This doesn’t mean the proposal has been accepted,” the official said. “We do get a sense of some movement.”

A senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official said Shultz apparently has decided to keep his mediation effort going as long as no party firmly rejects the proposal. The official, who supports the Shultz plan, said the strategy may ultimately work better than trying to force an affirmative answer at this stage.

No Need for ‘Yes’

“As long as there is no ‘no,’ there is no need for a ‘yes,’ ” the official said. “The lack of an answer provides a green light.”

Shultz is scheduled to confer today with Jordan’s King Hussein and Syria’s President Hafez Assad. He will return to Israel tonight for more talks with Israeli officials.

The Israeli government has not taken an official position on the Shultz initiative because the Cabinet is split between Likud, which opposes the plan, and Labor, which favors it.

A senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, who attended the talks with Shultz, said the only way to break the impasse in Israel is for Hussein to accept the U.S. plan. That would force the Israeli government to make a decision that may well be affirmative, he said.

However, Hussein has indicated that he is holding back, waiting for Jerusalem to make the first move.

Effigy of Arafat

Israeli hard-liners who object to any peace settlement that would require Israel to withdraw from occupied territory erected near Shultz’s hotel a 50-foot-tall plywood effigy of Yasser Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization leader, waving an American flag and holding a sign reading “Welcome George.”

Other opponents ran an advertisement in the English-language Jerusalem Post comparing Shultz’s plan, which calls for Israel to trade territory for peace, with former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler before World War II.

Strike on West Bank

On the other side of the issue, Palestinians imposed a general strike in Arab East Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank to protest the Shultz plan, which assigns no role for the PLO.

Shultz made no friends among pro-PLO Palestinians when he told Israeli newspaper editors that he supports Peres’ “three no’s” for a negotiation--no Palestinian state, no total return to the borders as they were before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and no negotiations with the PLO.

Meanwhile, a 20-year-old Palestinian, Hamed Abdel-Mahdi Zidat, was shot and killed by Israeli troops during a demonstration at the West Bank town of Bani Naim, south of Jerusalem. A second unidentified Palestinian died in a hospital from wounds suffered in a clash with soldiers in the Gaza Strip last Wednesday.

The two deaths brought to 132 the number of Palestinians killed in the current uprising, which began in December.