A Signal for Shamir

The messages from Washington to Jerusalem are becoming blunter. First, Secretary of State James A. Baker III suggested that somewhere down the road Israel may have no choice but to negotiate directly with the Palestine Liberation Organization. That possibility remains utterly unacceptable to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, although a recent poll found that 62% of Israelis are reconciled to the chance of it happening within the next five years. Now, just days before his scheduled meeting with Shamir and with Egypt’s visiting President Hosni Mubarak standing at his side, President Bush has called on Israel to end its “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Bush carefully and properly avoided any hint of a timetable for Israel’s withdrawal from the territories it took over with its victory in 1967’s Six Day War or any reference to the conditions under which the “achievement of Palestinian political rights” should occur. The policy formula maintained by successive U.S. administrations is that occupied land should be exchanged for durable peace, and new and permanent boundaries must be negotiated to satisfy Israel’s security concerns. That policy remains in force, and was underscored as Bush and Mubarak publicly accepted Israel’s need for security safeguards while repudiating “any irredentist claims and vengeful acts” from the Palestinian side. The reference to irredentism was an unequivocal rejection of Palestinian claims of a “right” to return to former homes in Israel proper.

It was to Shamir, though, to whom Bush’s signal was most clearly directed. The prime minister has hinted that he will bring Bush some new ideas about giving the 1.7 million Palestinians in the occupied territories a larger say in their own governance, provided they first become more docile. But every indication is that the best Shamir will offer is a bundle of stale dogmas and failed expedients packaged in new wrapping. Shamir’s greatest hope is to get Palestinians in the territories to elect leaders who will serve as political alternatives to the PLO. There is absolutely no reason to think that Palestinians will cooperate in such a plan, not least because Shamir and his Likud Party have made it clear that no matter what happens they will never negotiate an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. It is this inflexibility and lack of more creative thinking at the highest levels of Israel’s government that is eliciting growing U.S. impatience with its friend and ally.

That is by no means tantamount to an American endorsement of, or even necessarily greater sympathy for, the Palestinian political case. Even as frustration with Israel has grown in the United States, the theme that both sides must be ready to compromise, both sides must abandon their extremist goals, both sides must be prepared to negotiate directly has remained constant. The PLO and its supporters like to imply that Yasser Arafat’s “recognition” of Israel in December was a concession of such magnitude that no further evidence of a change in PLO thinking is necessary. That, of course, is absurd. No less absurd is the hope of Shamir and those who think like him that somehow Palestinian nationalism as expressed in the intifada can be wished away, suppressed or stage-managed by Israeli-run local elections. What Washington is saying to both sides is that the time has come to recognize realities, respond seriously and embark at last on what promises to be a years-long struggle to make peace.