Israel Floating Mideast Peace Ideas

Israel has begun to float proposals on the form and substance of eventual Middle East peace talks in the hope of countering efforts by the Palestine Liberation Organization to begin negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state.

Sources in the office of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and in the Foreign Ministry say the proposed initiatives center on the 1978 Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel, which provided for a period of “autonomy” for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

They say that presentation of a plan will eventually coincide with a publicity campaign to win the support of the American public and, specifically, influential Jewish groups in the United States.

Once an Immovable Object

Independent observers have noted that the outlines of the ideas being floated are little different from proposals as much as a decade old. They point out, however, that because the plans are being weighed by Shamir, who has long been considered an immovable object on peace talks, they reflect an effort by the government to give a fresh face to Israeli policy.

“What is new is that these ideas come from Shamir,” said Yaron Ezrahi, a political theorist at Hebrew University. “It seems that at last he recognizes that the situation is changing, so Israel must change to keep its head above water.”

A Foreign Ministry official said: “Shamir has some plans in mind. This is clearly movement. But he hasn’t reached any final decisions.”

Shamir told government radio Tuesday that he had not yet worked out a “formal” peace plan. Avi Pazner, his spokesman, would say only that the government is “studying now certain ideas based on our principles.”

The two comments were part of a denial of a report here in the Nation newspaper that said Foreign Minister Moshe Arens gave U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz a draft peace plan at a meeting on chemical warfare this week in Paris.

The report and the denials notwithstanding, a mosaic of proposals has appeared here this week, both in conversations with government officials and in published articles. Generally, the ideas center on two main issues: to whom Israel would talk and what would be talked about.

First, the government remains opposed to talking with the PLO, which it views as a terrorist organization committed to destroying Israel. However, Shamir is toying with the idea of permitting elections in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip aimed at letting Palestinians choose their own delegates to peace talks. Previously, Shamir opposed such elections on the grounds that the PLO would intimidate voters into voting for its candidates.

While conceding PLO victory in any such vote, the government views an election as the lesser of two evils, the alternative being direct PLO representatives chosen outside the occupied territories.

Only a Symbolic Role

Talks with the elected Palestinian delegates, plus officials from Egypt and Jordan, could be held under the auspices of the United States and Soviet Union or of the United Nations. But according to a report on Israel Radio, quoting Shamir, the United Nations would play only a symbolic role and not “intervene” in any way.

From Israel’s point of view, the goal of such talks would be to grant limited autonomy, rather than statehood, to Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. Autonomy is defined as local self-rule by Palestinians until a longer-term resolution is worked out.

In an interview with The Times, a top Shamir assistant, Yosef Ben-Aharon, said that under autonomy, Arabs would be able to select their own local leaders and, if Jordan would permit it, legislators in the Jordanian Parliament. Ben-Aharon called this a plan for “maximum autonomy.”

Ben-Aharon outlined an eventual economic union of Israel and Jordan plus the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would permit a free flow of goods and travel across the borders of each “entity.”

He said that Israel would maintain security within the West Bank and Gaza in order to prohibit the “thrust of Arab power” from settling on Israel’s doorstep.

Ben-Aharon blamed an apparent delay in coming up with a new peace policy on the coalition of Shamir’s rightist Likud Party and the center-left Labor Party.

“New ideas have to be approved by a lot of people,” he said, “and that is a slow process.”

The pressing interest here in producing a peace plan stems from Washington’s decision last month to talk with the PLO. The spectacle of Israel’s foremost ally talking with a group that sees peace coming in the form of a new independent Arab state on Israel’s borders stunned Israeli officials.

“We are against any independent state west of the Jordan River,” Ben-Aharon said. “Talks with the PLO would inevitably turn on the creation of a Palestinian state.”

Egypt and Jordan have both recognized the Palestinian state, as has the Soviet Union. The Israeli concept of autonomy for the Palestinians is rejected by the PLO and its international supporters as a means of creeping annexation of the occupied territories by Israel.

Israel has embarked on a renewed diplomatic campaign to get its point across, but the way does not look easy.