Rather Than Torpedoing Shultz Efforts, Hussein Underscores the Value

King Hussein’s dramatic announcement that Jordan would relinquish its claim to Palestinian territory west of the Jordan River has probably generated more press speculation than the Middle East has seen since Egyptian President Anwar Sadat announced in 1977 that he was prepared to travel to Jerusalem.

While there remain many unanswered questions, one line of speculation--that Hussein has torpedoed Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s Middle East peace initiative--should not be among them.

Even before Hussein’s announcement it was apparent that the secretary’s efforts were not going to achieve a breakthrough in the time left to the Reagan Administration. There was therefore nothing to be torpedoed. This said, it is nevertheless important that the confusion created by King Hussein’s announcement not be permitted to obscure either what the Shultz initiative has accomplished or the challenges it has left to the next Administration--challenges that the king’s bombshell has only underscored.

Heading the list of accomplishments, the secretary has put the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict back near the top of America’s foreign-policy agenda. Also, by reminding Middle East governments and publics of some fundamental realities that many would prefer not to confront, he has helped stimulate a political debate about what is at stake if the impasse in the peace process continues. In particular, he has focused attention on one reality that has been too long ignored. As Shultz so graphically put it, the occupation by Israel of Palestinian-inhabited territory in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is a dead end. It is a prescription for continuation of the conflict, not for its solution.

This is the issue that should be at the heart of the debate. Progress toward a solution must start by recognition on the part of Israelis and Palestinians that the conflict between them, however much it has been complicated by other factors and forces, is grounded in the reality that both lay claim to territory that each considers its homeland. Until the principle (first enunciated over 40 years ago) of sharing this territory between them is accepted by both sides, no peaceful solution will be possible. Put another way, both sides must agree that the principle of exchanging territory for peace, which lies at the core of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, applies to the West Bank and Gaza (as it did to Sinai and must ultimately to the Syrian Golan Heights as well). Today this principle--a necessary point of departure for what would still be a protracted and complex negotiating process--is rejected by half of Israel’s governing coalition as well as by elements of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Another accomplishment of the Shultz initiative has been to engage the Soviet leadership in serious discussions of the Middle East. How much political capital the Soviets are prepared to expend to advance the cause of Arab-Israeli peace remains to be seen, but clearly Soviet willingness to work cooperatively within an international framework and to urge Moscow’s more recalcitrant friends toward compromise would help move the peace process along.

Despite its limitations, the Shultz initiative has thus laid useful groundwork, ensuring that a new Administration does not have to start from square one. There remain, however, two interrelated issues that have not been faced up to and which will require fresh and creative thinking by a new Administration if they are not to remain major obstacles to movement in the peace process.

First, it is widely recognized today that the Israeli-Palestinian relationship is central to the problem of getting negotiations started and that, whatever role Jordan ultimately plays, Palestinians must be involved in the search for a solution. It is also clear that most Palestinians see the PLO as the institutional symbol of their national identity and as their chosen representative, however much they may otherwise disagree among themselves. Having no direct contacts with the PLO, the United States is at a disadvantage in seeking to play a fully effective peacemaking role, just as the absence of Soviet-Israeli diplomatic relations limits the role that Moscow can play.

Past efforts to find a basis for establishing a U.S.-PLO dialogue have been caught up in a vicious circle of U.S. domestic politics, U.S.-Israeli relations and commitments, and internal PLO divisions and ineptitude. One of the toughest questions confronting the next Administration--but also confronting the PLO and its Arab supporters--is what needs to be done to establish a long overdue U.S.-PLO dialogue. This is not just an American problem, but it is one to whose solution the United States will have to contribute, politically controversial as that will be.

Finally, a new U.S. Administration needs to ask whether it is reasonable to seek Palestinian participation in the peace process while ruling out ab initio what most Palestinians want: the option of a Palestinian entity of their own which, however circumscribed, they can call their state. Not to rule this option out, which the United States has done up to now, does not mean endorsing a Palestinian state as the only solution. In many ways a Palestinian-Jordanian federation, which Washington supports, makes better practical sense for all concerned. But it is not for the United States to determine unilaterally in advance of negotiations what the solution should be.

A much more defensible position for the United States would be to recognize that the principle of self-determination applies to the Palestinians, while making clear that how this principle is implemented must be the subject of give-and-take negotiations in which Israel, as a vitally interested party, would participate. There is a logical contradiction in asserting that a Palestinian state would be inherently irredentist and therefore a threat to Israel’s territorial integrity, while saying in effect that denying the Palestinians this option will somehow make them less irredentist.

Given the situation in the Middle East, the arguments for keeping Arab-Israeli peacemaking high on the foreign-policy agenda will be compelling. The question, therefore, is not so much whether the next Administration gives the Middle East priority attention but rather how it deals with the challenges these Palestinian-related issues will continue to pose. That they cannot forever be ignored is clear. The trick will be to get the Palestinians to the negotiating table without driving Israel away in the process--and that may be the greatest challenge of all.