Israeli Debate Flares Over Issue of Palestinian State

A Palestinian proposal to unilaterally declare an independent state in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip triggered sharp debate among Israeli politicians Sunday, including a rare public clash over the activities of the country’s Shin Bet secret police.

The controversy erupted as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy held meetings with top Israeli leaders and warned that the situation in the region is becoming more unstable because of the lack of progress toward a negotiated solution to the conflict.

The Israeli differences over the proposed Palestinian declaration came despite near-universal official dismissal of the plan as impractical. The debate revolved instead around the plan’s possible impact as a political symbol, and it began with what Israel Radio described as “animated and sometimes heated discussion” at a regular Sunday meeting of the Cabinet.

Working papers associated with the plan, which was first reported by The Times last Friday, were leaked to Israeli Television over the weekend by Shin Bet security sources, according to reports in several Hebrew-language newspapers Sunday. Shin Bet agents reportedly found the documents during a raid last week on the office of Faisal Husseini, a prominent Palestinian activist and head of the Arab Studies Center in East Jerusalem.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin angrily condemned the leak during Sunday’s Cabinet meeting, Israel Radio reported. A source close to the minister confirmed that he felt the action was politically motivated and that it damaged Israel by giving the idea more prominence than it deserved.

Israel Television reported Sunday night that the leak was authorized personally by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who has ministerial responsibility for Israel’s security services.

Shamir sidestepped questions about his role during a subsequent television interview, but he did defend the action. “It’s good that we should know who is standing behind the stone throwers and the Molotov cocktail throwers,” he commented. “He who published it had his good reasons for it.”

Shamir’s main political rival, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, was also interviewed on television Sunday night, and he dismissed the Palestinian plan as nothing over which to panic. Whoever leaked the documents, Peres added, “did something foolish. He got himself nervous, and he got everybody else nervous.”

Promoted by Underground

The proposed Palestinian declaration is being promoted by underground leaders of the eight-month-old anti-Israeli uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is intended to assert a Palestinian claim to lands effectively renounced by Jordan’s King Hussein, who has said he is disengaging himself from areas his family ruled between 1948 and the 1967 Six-Day War.

Palestinian sources say they have no illusions about being able to actually exercise sovereignty over the territories as long as the Israeli army occupies them. Rather, they say, the declaration is seen as a political initiative that might win enough international recognition for the Palestinians that Israel would have to accept them as an equal partner in peace talks.

It is understood that the idea has high-level Palestine Liberation Organization backing, although it has not been formally endorsed by that organization.

Denounced as ‘Crazy’ Idea

Shamir’s office denounced the idea as “crazy,” and both the prime minister’s rightist Likud Bloc and the centrist Labor Alignment headed by Peres issued statements Sunday rejecting it.

“Neither Jordan nor the Palestinians will dictate a unilateral solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Labor’s statement declared. “Israel absolutely rejects any attempt to create facts on the ground either through terror, violence or plans to set up a PLO state.”

However, the heads of three small leftist parties called on the government to express its willingness to meet with a PLO delegation provided that the group recognizes Israel and renounces terrorism. The leftist party leaders argued that in light of Hussein’s moves to disengage himself from the West Bank and of the Palestinian plan, it is necessary for Israel to come up with an initiative.

It is longstanding Israeli government policy not to have any dealings with the PLO, which is depicted as an unrepentant terrorist organization.

One Israeli Supporter

The only senior politician who had anything nice to say about the Palestinian plan was Labor’s energy minister, Moshe Shahal, who saw a major step forward in the proposal’s implicit acceptance of a Jewish state beside a future Palestinian state.

“For the first time, the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza are voicing their attitude, their disappointment with their leadership,” Shahal told Israel Radio. “They are trying to have a more moderate and more realistic solution. This is, I would say, the most important thing in this document.”

Palestinian sources say that recognition of Israel in the plan was meant to address perennial Israeli and U.S. concerns that the Palestinians’ real goal is an end to the Zionist state. Final boundaries between the two homelands would be subject to negotiation, according to the proposed declaration.

However, at least one working paper outlines what Palestinian sources described as a maximum territorial goal--the proposed boundaries of the 1947 U.N. partition plan for Palestine, which would include several areas within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

Audacity Criticized

Most Israeli critics ignored the implicit recognition of Israel’s right to exist and blasted what they saw as the audacity of a claim not just to the occupied territories, but to significant parts of Israel proper as well. During his meeting with Murphy on Sunday, Foreign Minister Peres stressed that the PLO will not be permitted to fill the vacuum created by Jordan’s disengagement from the occupied territories, according to a ministry spokesman.

Separately, a Foreign Ministry source blasted the Palestinian declaration as “not a serious plan. There is no way whatsoever that anyone on the Palestinian side can implement it. . . . They cannot run the cities, the institutions, the education system, the health system. They declare a state, and they cannot run it in any aspect.”

The source refused, however, to discuss the possible political impact of the declaration. Asked if it might not bring the Palestinians more support and sympathy from abroad, he commented, “I don’t know.”