Likud Appears to Be Stiffening Stance on Talks

As Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens prepares for his first high-level meetings with the Bush Administration next week in Washington, there are signs that the Likud-led government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is stiffening its stance toward Middle East peace negotiations.

Contrary to earlier expectations, Arens is carrying no new Israeli proposals to Washington, Foreign Ministry officials said. Arens, who arrived in New York on Friday, is scheduled to meet Monday first with Secretary of State James A. Baker III and then with President Bush. He is also scheduled to meet subsequently with Senate and House leaders.

The officials said Arens will focus instead on trying to persuade the Bush Administration to abandon its dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization. He will argue that recent attempts by Palestinian guerrillas to penetrate Israel’s northern border bear out Israel’s contention that the PLO is a terrorist organization that has not changed its ways despite PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s renunciation of terrorism last December.

Lower Expectations

Describing a proposed Middle East peace conference as a non-starter from Israel’s point of view, a senior Israeli source said Arens will also seek to persuade the Bush Administration to tell its allies in the Arab world that they must have lower expectations about what they and the Palestinians can achieve.

From these and other recent comments by Israeli officials, it would appear that the main aim of Arens’ mission is to brake the momentum in a peace process that, since late last year, has been moving in what Shamir and Arens believe is a dangerously wrong direction for Israel.

The momentum began to develop last November, when the PLO, meeting in Algiers, effectively renounced its claim to all of Palestine by formally endorsing a two-state solution to the Middle East problem. It picked up steam the following month when Arafat, at a special session of the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, publicly recognized Israel’s right to exist and renounced terrorism.

As a result, the outgoing Reagan Administration responded by dropping a longstanding ban on talks with the PLO. West European nations, endorsing the proposal for an international conference, applauded the PLO concessions and began pressing Israel to respond in kind. The Soviet Union, which played an important role in moderating the PLO outlook, sent its foreign minister to the Middle East, where he reportedly persuaded Syria to support the idea of a peace conference.

Israel, meanwhile, was locked in a divisive election and paralyzed by a prolonged coalition crisis from which a stronger Likud Cabinet has only recently emerged.

Seeking to regain the momentum, or redirect it away from an international peace conference and the territorial concessions this would ultimately imply, Shamir let it be leaked that he was preparing his own peace initiative and would unveil it next month in Washington.

The Shamir initiative is being described here as “Camp David Plus,” because it is based on the formula for Palestinian autonomy contained in the decade-old peace accords that were signed by Egypt and Israel and brokered by President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

Exactly what the “plus” contains has not been made clear. However, from a number of conciliatory remarks Shamir made last month, it seemed at one stage that he was edging closer to the Arab position on several key points, including some kind of international auspices for a peace conference.

But several things have happened since then that indicate that the Israeli position is stiffening again.

For example, Baker and Bush have made it clear that they are in no hurry to cobble together a new U.S. peace initiative in the Middle East. Although it is to resume in Tunisia later this month, the U.S.-PLO dialogue also seems to be foundering, with the PLO leadership showing signs of frustration at what it sees as the Bush Administration’s reluctance to talk about substantive issues in the peace process.

Although not related, on the face of it, to the peace process, last month’s municipal elections in Israel seem to have had a major impact on Shamir’s position, analysts said. The humiliating defeat that Finance Minister Shimon Peres’ Labor Party suffered in the elections effectively reduced its status in the coalition to that of junior partner, thereby relieving domestic pressure on Shamir to come up with a workable peace plan, the analysts said.

Likens Arafat to Hitler

Vehemently reasserting that Israel will never talk to the PLO or make territorial concessions in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, Shamir has in the past week compared Arafat to Adolf Hitler, scoffed at the PLO leader’s offer to come to Jerusalem to negotiate by saying, “We’d put him in prison if he did” and undertaken a vituperative campaign against his critics by branding those who call for negotiations with the PLO “traitors” to their country.

At the same time, Arens and other Likud officials now seem to be deliberately minimizing “Camp David Plus” by saying they see no need for urgency in coming up with new peace proposals.

Shamir’s critics believe that with the pressure off for the moment, his strategy is simply to out-wait Arafat in the belief that he will not be able to hold all the PLO’s quarrelsome factions to his pledge to forswear terrorism.

Any further attempts by radical PLO factions to infiltrate Israel’s northern border would then almost certainly be used by Israel to try to pressure the United States into breaking off its dialogue with the guerrilla organization.

THE KEY PLAYERS Bush--The President continues to support a dialogue with the PLO, despite Israel’s objections, but has made it clear that the United States is in no hurry to put together a new U.S. peace initiative.

Arens--Israeli foreign minister will carry no new proposals to Washington. Expected to focus on trying to persuade Bush Administration to abandon its dialogue with the PLO. Will also try to get United States to tell its allies to have lower expectations on what the Israelis can achieve with the Palestinians.

Shamir--Israeli prime minister has developed his own peace initiative, described in Washington as “Camp David Plus.”It is based on the forumla for Palestinian autonomy contained in the decade-old peace accords, but the “plus” has not been made clear. Although he seemed to be edging closer to some kind of international auspices for a peace conference, the he recently has stiffened his stance, branding those who call for negotiations with the PLO “traitors” to their country.