He Warns Results Could Spark New Era of ‘Violence, Terrorism’ : Israel Vote May Halt Peace Effort, Jordan Official Says

Prime Minister Zaid Rifai of Jordan said Wednesday that the Israeli election results are likely to freeze the peace process and usher in a new era of “violence, extremism and terrorism” in the Middle East.

He called on the Palestine Liberation Organization to give a boost to the faltering peace effort by adopting an “internationally acceptable position” when the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s highest decision-making body, convenes in Algiers next week.

But Rifai seemed less than optimistic about the PLO’s ability to do this now, in light of what another senior Jordanian official described as the “disappointing” Israeli election results.

Several senior Palestinian officials concurred with this pessimistic assessment, saying there is virtually no chance that PLO moderates will be able to persuade hard-liners to agree to recognize Israel at the moment.

“Differences over how strongly to suggest the PLO’s willingness to recognize Israel have not been resolved,” one PLO source said. “But there is a consensus that it’s not worth splitting the organization apart now, when peace is unlikely to be forthcoming from Israel.”

The Palestine National Council is to meet in the Algerian capital Nov. 12-14 to ratify a so-called declaration of independence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip after Jordan’s July 31 decision to sever its legal and administrative ties to those territories. The council is also expected to issue a call for an international peace conference to settle the Palestinian question on the basis of U.N. Resolution 181, the United Nations’ 1947 plan for partitioning what was then British-ruled Palestine.

Because that plan provided for the establishment of two independent states, one Jewish and one Arab, PLO officials have asserted that its acceptance by the council will mark a major step toward recognition of Israel.

41-Year-Old Formula

However, some PLO moderates concede that Western countries--to say nothing of Israel--are not likely to rejoice over the organization’s endorsement of a 41-year-old formula for a far smaller Israel than the one that exists today.

Supported by Arab moderates like Egypt and Jordan, this faction has been urging the PLO to show a more explicit and realistic willingness to recognize Israel by accepting U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which implicitly affirm the Jewish state’s right to exist behind the borders that existed before the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

Hopes that Yasser Arafat, the PLO chairman, might be able to soften the hard-liners’ opposition to this were slim to begin with; now they appear to have been dashed by the Israeli election results. Although inconclusive, the results seem to give the right-wing Likud Party of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir a slight edge over the center-left Labor Party of Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in the effort to form a new coalition government.

Peres supports the Arab call for a peace conference and has expressed willingness to trade at least some of the territory Israel captured in the 1967 war for a settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute. Shamir opposes the peace conference format and refuses to consider territorial concessions.

Jordan’s King Hussein warned last month that a Likud victory would be “an absolute disaster” for the region--a warning Rifai has echoed in interviews with Western journalists over the past several days.

Rifai told an interviewer Wednesday that regardless of which party succeeds in forming a coalition, the razor-close outcome is likely to perpetuate the political stalemate in Israel.

“The unfortunate result of this is that there won’t be any movement toward peace,” he said. “The status quo will continue and eventually deteriorate. This is a recipe for disaster, because we’ve reached the point where either we move toward peace or things will deteriorate into more violence, extremism and terrorism. The situation cannot continue as it is.”

Morose Assessment

The prime minister’s morose assessment was typical of the comments expressed by other Jordanian officials. Foreign Minister Taher Masri described the results as “disappointing” and expressed concern that a Likud-led government would have no qualms about using extreme brutality to crush the intifada , the 10-month-old Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories.

Rifai voiced similar fears and suggested an additional danger--that the uprising will become so bloody, and Arab-Israeli emotions so polarized, that the momentum toward peace could be irretrievably lost. In such an emotionally charged climate, he suggested, extremist solutions such as the so-called transfer option--the forcible deportation of masses of Palestinians from the West Bank--would inevitably “lead to another Middle East war.”

Egypt, in its first official reaction to the Israeli elections, adopted a more cautious tone, but its concern was evident in a statement issued in Cairo by Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel Meguid.

“Egypt is . . . anxious to emphasize the need for action to carry on with the peace process to achieve stability in the region,” he said. “For its part, Egypt will make every effort to this end and hopes the new Israeli government will do likewise.”

Another Egyptian official, Deputy Foreign Minister Butros Butros Ghali, told reporters that Egypt “will do business with any new government in Israel in order to . . . achieve a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian problem on the basis of self-determination” for the Palestinians.

But Rifai was more pessimistic about the prospects of negotiations with Likud.

“It’s not Likud itself we’re against, but what it stands for,” he said. “When they declare they have no intention of accepting the basic tenet of peace, which is land for peace, and no intention of attending an international conference . . . then what kind of bridges can you build with such a party?”

The prime minister said it is now up to the international community, and particularly the United States “as Israel’s main armorer, banker and supporter,” to put pressure on whatever government emerges in Israel to show more flexibility in the peace process.