Shamir Offers Partial Israeli Troop Pullout; PLO Rejects It as ‘Retread’

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir today offered to withdraw Israeli troops from some cities in the occupied territories if Palestinians accept autonomy as a step toward solving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

It was Shamir’s most conciliatory statement yet on Israel’s future role in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but was quickly rejected by the PLO on the grounds it is just a retread of the Camp David accords.

“I advise Mr. Shamir to stop digging into his old stock and bringing out these goods which are out of date. . . . No Palestinians or Arabs will speak to him on this basis,” PLO spokesman Ahmgd Abderrahman said in Tunis.

Outlining his plan, Shamir told reporters: “At a certain stage, when there is autonomy, the army will leave several urban centers and be focused in some other areas.”

Shamir pointed out that a troop redeployment was called for in the U.S.-brokered Camp David accords.

The 1978 accords call for electing local Palestinian representatives to hold peace talks with Israel, along with representatives of Egypt and Jordan.

There would then be a five-year period of autonomy, followed by further negotiations on the final status of the territories.

The PLO and many Palestinians in the territories occupied in the 1967 Middle East War reject the Camp David accords and the concept of autonomy, maintaining these ideas are intended to circumvent the PLO and contradict Palestinian demands for an independent state.

Shamir said the most crucial step in the peace process is to begin negotiations. “Once we get to this stage, positive results will come,” he said.

But he reiterated that Israel will not speak to the Palestine Liberation Organization and will not accept an independent Palestinian state.

Shamir outlined his views as paralleling the Camp David accords, which led to Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt.

“The peace process will be comprised of two stages,” he said. “First an interim condition and this will include full autonomy. In the second stage (there will be) direct negotiations without preconditions between Israel, Palestinian Arabs and Arab countries.”

During a speech earlier to rabbis from the Israel Bonds organization, Shamir lambasted PLO leader Yasser Arafat and called recent international recognition of the Palestinian group “the bizarre Arafat festival.”

“The object of the massive PLO disinformation campaign was to persuade an ignorant and naive world that in fact they have legitimate national rights in our land and that they are the paragons of peace in this area. Nothing is further from the truth,” he said.

The PLO won significant diplomatic gains, including the end of a 13-year U.S. ban on talks with the group, after Arafat in December recognized Israel and renounced terrorism.