Now at the Precipice, Will Israel Reassess?

Israelis awoke last Thursday morning and found that the political ground had fallen out from under their feet. Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s announcement that the United States would open a substantive dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization removed the last, most important, barrier to the PLO’s international legitimacy.

American spokesmen insisted that this move implies no change in U.S. attitudes toward the substance of a political settlement. Nevertheless, it is clear that proposals for an independent Palestinian state, consistently rejected by the United States and still anathema to most Israelis, will now get a more receptive hearing in Washington.

A few Israelis, mostly on the left, welcomed this development. But the political Establishment and mainstream public opinion are thoroughly disoriented. It is not so much the American decision that is a shock. After all, the United States has only done what it consistently said it would do if Yasser Arafat would only say the magic words. The worst that Washington can be accused of is naivete. It is the PLO, which Israelis claim to know and understand far better than does anyone else on the international scene, that has confounded Israeli expectations.

This is not the first time that Israel has been taken by surprise. During the past year alone, the intellectual foundations of Israeli foreign and national-security policy were twice shaken by major developments that most Israelis were convinced could not happen: a sustained Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the disengagement of King Hussein of Jordan from the occupied territories. Now the PLO has also done what Israelis believed it was inherently incapable of doing.

But if the Palestinians have proved that they can’t be trusted to behave as they are supposed to, it is the American action that causes the greatest concern--it leaves Israel completely isolated in its rejection of the PLO, without a clear idea of what this means or what should now be done.

Brought to the edge of this political precipice, many Israelis instinctively resort to familiar and comforting postures--demands for national unity, denials that the Palestinians have changed or can change, and, most commonly, appeals for a more intense information campaign to help the Americans see the error of their ways. These responses are firmly within the Israeli tradition. After all, the country has shown a tremendous capacity to adapt to surprises in the past, and it is hardly the first time that Israel feels alone; some Israelis even take a perverse pride in defying what they perceive to be the indifference or hostility of the international community.

Nevertheless, there is a chance that this time things will turn out differently and that the conventional wisdom sustaining Israeli policy on the Palestinian issue will undergo a major reassessment. The reasons for this are as much psychological as political:

--Israelis are getting tired of surprises. They are challenging the hegemony of ideological negativism that leads to these surprises, and they are finding it increasingly difficult to conceal their impatience with leaders who cannot offer constructive alternatives to the formula of “no PLO, no Palestinian state.”

--The national consensus on this formula is more tentative than might appear, because political opinion is full of inconsistencies. More than two-thirds of the population strongly opposes a Palestinian state, but two-thirds also favor direct talks with the PLO. Most Israelis are afraid of the peace that Arafat offers, because they believe that he doesn’t mean what he says, can’t control other Palestinians who refuse even to say it, and would expose Israel to serious security risks. At the same time, most Israelis also sincerely want peaceand know deep down what that requires. In short, Israeli opinion is not so much intransigent as it is volatile: confused, ambivalent, unable to initiate change, but potentially able to respond.

--Circumstances of isolation are new. In the past, Israelis were united in their defiance because they were confident of the justice of their cause and could easily attribute the criticism of others to venality, ignorance or malice. This time there is no oil crisis to blame, American involvement in the Middle East is not a weekend hobby and George Shultz is universally accepted as a friend of Israel. It is therefore no longer possible to dismiss out of hand the proposition that Israel’s situation stems from some flaw in its policy.

Despite these considerations, it will not be easy for Israel to embark on the secular equivalent of a religious reformation. Longstanding dogmas and fears cannot be overcome without help. Some of this can still come from the PLO if it makes good on its renunciation of terrorism. Politically, however, the PLO has already done what can reasonably be expected of it at this stage. It is now up to the United States to steer Israel’s domestic debate in the direction it needs to go.