Rabin Continues to Seek Opening for Talks With Arabs

Washington should press the Palestine Liberation Organization to desist from threatening Palestinians who take a line independent of the PLO in the West Bank and Gaza Strip so that Israel can find local partners for peace talks, Israeli Defense Minster Yitzhak Rabin said Tuesday.

Rabin has embarked on a solo effort to get talks going with local Palestinians while excluding the PLO. Although the local Arabs might include some with links to the organization, Rabin believes that they will be more willing to compromise because they are influenced by home-grown concerns.

In his comments, Rabin scorned the PLO’s members as people living in comfort abroad, a clear effort to distinguish them from local Arabs living under Israeli rule.

“I believe it is the responsibility of the United States in its dialogue with the PLO, (in) Tunisia and hotels all over the world, to stress that the interpretation of the United States of terror is intimidation and threats to those who reside in the territories,” Rabin said.

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza “do not do what they think (is right), because, as Mr. Arafat threatened somebody in the territories, if you call for any stop in the uprising, he will fire bullets into (your) body,” Rabin maintained.

Arafat Threat

Rabin was referring to a threat by PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat against Palestinians proposing a truce in the intifada, as the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories is known in Arabic. The threat was widely taken to be aimed at Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij, a Christian Arab, who made such a proposal.

Rabin has opened exploratory talks with local Arab leaders, including some with clear PLO links, in hopes of easing pressure on Israel to negotiate with the PLO abroad, the defense minister and other top Israeli officials say.

Israel is under intense international pressure to open some sort of dialogue with the PLO. Israel’s main ally, the United States, has begun exploratory talks with the organization, while European nations friendly with Israel have received Arafat in their capitals to encourage negotiations.

The pressure comes at a time when Israel’s handling of the Arab uprising, now in its 14th month, is under heavy criticism at home and abroad. The uprising shows no sign of being brought to an end.

Israel should pursue links with “all elements of the population in the territories as a positive process toward shifting the focus of interest away from the PLO outside,” Rabin told Israeli reporters recently.

“The time has come for Israel to declare to whom it is willing to talk and what it is willing to talk about. We cannot restrict ourselves to a policy of merely confronting violence in the territories with force,” Rabin has also declared.

Rabin recently sent a representative to speak with Faisal Husseini, a top PLO operative in the West Bank, before Husseini was released from prison Sunday.

The representative, Shmuel Goren, the coordinator of Israeli policy on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, forwarded ideas from Rabin on ways to end the Arab uprising.

Husseini, in comments made upon arriving at his Jerusalem home, refused to offer himself as a substitute for the PLO leadership. Israel should “go immediately and start talking to the PLO,” he said.

Even if Husseini was inclined, setting himself up in place of the PLO could be dangerous; the PLO has long opposed, sometimes with bullets, any parallel Arab leadership in the West Bank or Gaza. The organization favors the convening of an international peace conference in which it would be a full negotiating partner. The PLO, whose leadership is based in Tunisia, wants to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Israeli political observers were skeptical of the chances that Husseini could be a vehicle for talks free of the PLO. They saw in Rabin’s proposals a variation on a previous policy--the search for local leaders who might accede to Israel’s quest to keep large parts, if not all, of the West Bank and Gaza.

Rabin’s ideas center on letting Arabs choose their own negotiators through elections in the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO is demanding Israeli withdrawal from the territories before elections are held, preferably under U.N. auspices.

The opening to Husseini, as embryonic as it was, created a storm of debate in Israel. The government, which is an uneasy coalition of members of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s rightist Likud Party and more dovish members of the center-left Labor Party, split sharply on the issue.

Right-wing politicians charged that contact means eventual acceptance by Israel of a Palestinian state proposed by the PLO. Members of the Labor Party, including Rabin, say it is time to talk with someone, lest Israel risk continuation of an unfavorable conflict with restive Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza.

At the earliest, Israel is not expected to come up with a formal peace proposal until sometime this month.

Shamir has reacted to Rabin’s initiative ambiguously in public. He has, however, stopped short of condemning the move, which his spokesman, Avi Pazner, says is tantamount to approval.

Pazner emphatically denied that the move represented a step toward direct contact with the PLO. Shamir has vowed never to talk with the organization.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Pazner said. “This is not contact with the PLO. We are looking for a Palestinian to whom we can talk, a valid interlocutor who is here and not abroad.”

In confronting the obvious paradox in talking to someone who belongs to the PLO in order to avoid talking to the PLO, Pazner resorted to hair-splitting. “We think he is not a formal member,” he said. “In any case, it is what we talk about that counts.”