Mideast: the Political Truths

Is it really necessary after all this time for an American secretary of state to have to remind Israelis and Palestinians that “the status of the West Bank and Gaza cannot be determined by unilateral acts of either side but only through the process of negotiations”? Sadly it is, else George P. Shultz wouldn’t have bothered in the Reagan Administration’s closing days to sketch once more a position whose inescapable realism seems sure to place it at the heart of the next Administration’s Middle East policy as well.

Shultz’s remarks won’t be applauded by Israeli hard-liners who think that the Palestinian issue can be resolved by intensified repression or, failing that, by uprooting a restive populace and forcing it across the Jordan River. Nor will they be well received by the Palestinians who dreamily hope that if only they remain intransigent long enough they must one day prevail, without the bitter need to accept Israel’s reality and legitimacy. But others, those who see the folly of pursuing maximal aims and the inevitability of pragmatic compromise, will quietly welcome Shultz’s comments.

Shultz’s outline of the United States’ policy has in the main been familiar at least since President Reagan’s 1982 Middle East initiative. Neither side can impose a settlement on the other; a political solution can come only through the give and take of direct negotiations; a comprehensive settlement requires “the exchange of territory for peace.” Israel can’t go on deporting or jailing Palestinian moderates and then claim that it can’t find responsible figures to negotiate with. The Palestinians, especially the Palestine Liberation Organization, can’t try to evade the need for compromises through such absurd propaganda devices as calling for a revival of the 1947 U.N. partition plan for Palestine.

It isn’t clear whether Shultz’s comments, coming little more than six weeks before Israel’s elections and at a time when PLO leaders still cannot agree about what political line to adopt next, will have any effect on either side’s internal politics. What is clear is that the political truths that Shultz expressed will remain valid no matter what the outcome of the U.S. election or the Israeli election or the Palestinian national council meeting, if that long-delayed event is ever held. The facts have a way of hanging around. Sooner or later their demand to be accepted has to be recognized.