But Peres Says 3-Way Diplomacy ‘Isn’t to Our Liking’ : Israelis Accepting U.S. as Mediator With PLO

Once an unimagineable and even unmentionable prospect, the fact is beginning to sink in here that the United States is in effect mediating between Israel and its longtime enemy, the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Public acceptance of the notion of such three-way diplomacy, with Washington at its center, follows an offer by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to hold elections among Arabs in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip as a step toward peace. Israelis of various political stripes are now saying that the United States will take the offer to the PLO and get its response and bring it back to Israel.

On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, the head of Israel’s center-left Labor Party, declared flatly, “The United States is at this moment a mediator between us and the Palestinians, including the PLO, even though this isn’t to our liking.”

Can’t Be Seen Acquiescing

A senior Foreign Ministry official and member of Shamir’s rightist Likud Party spoke cautiously but reached the same conclusion: “We assume that the United States will take advantage of its dialogue to facilitate the election offer. Israel sticks to its formal rejection of talks with the PLO, but we realize the dialogue is there. It’s just that the prime minister cannot be seen to acquiesce in mediation.”

Until now, such things were not said out loud, and resistance to admitting that the United States is an official or unofficial go-between is still strong. Talks between the PLO and Israel, indirect as they may be, represent a major reversal in Israel’s persistent campaign to keep the PLO at the margin of Middle East peace moves.

Shamir himself, speaking on American television Sunday, responded to news of Peres’ comments evasively.

‘I Have to Be Cautious’

“I don’t know what Shimon Peres said. I didn’t hear it, and I will refrain from any comments on his words. I have to be cautious,” he remarked.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III also avoided the sensitive issue. “I don’t think I should characterize it and judge it if the prime minister of Israel is unwilling to do so,” he said. “It’s not up to me to make a judgment about whether they feel they are negotiating with the PLO. I’m sure they don’t feel that way.”

The Shamir government has insisted that U.S. talks with the PLO, begun last December, have nothing to do with Israel and are destructive of its own plans for peace. Shamir contends that the PLO is irredeemably bent on Israel’s destruction; he also opposes the PLO’s demand for an independent state adjacent to Israel.

Seeks Local Arab Leaders

Shamir favors elections as a way of finding local Arab leaders to deal with and thus avoid having to negotiate with the PLO. But in comments he made last week, Shamir admitted that winners in the election would probably include PLO sympathizers--a tacit admission that they would have PLO sanction to run.

“I think it could happen,” Shamir said of the participation of PLO sympathizers. “If these people that have some sympathies will agree and will accept the principle--the principles of the agreement about the elections--it means they will accept the process of negotiations between Palestinians and Israel.”

Some members of Peres’ more-dovish Labor Party, which is an uneasy coalition partner in Shamir’s government, have openly called for direct talks with the PLO.

Possible Scenarios

Israeli observers and officials have begun to draw out possible scenarios in which the United States would pursue PLO agreement to elections in return for further Israeli concessions.

The centrist Yediot Aharonot newspaper said that the United States will both pressure the PLO to accede to elections and attempt to persuade Israel to permit international observers to oversee the vote.

The center-left Haaretz newspaper reported that the Israeli government is studying an American proposal to include the PLO in negotiations over the final fate of the West Bank and Gaza once an interim “autonomy” agreement is reached. Under Shamir’s plan, elected Arab representatives would work out an autonomy arrangement with Israel.

Some Demands Can Be Met

One Foreign Ministry official said that Israel could “easily” meet some demands floated by the PLO for elections, including the presence of foreign observers and the withdrawal of some troops from West Bank and Gaza cities and towns.

But, he added, a demand that Palestinians who live in Jerusalem also get to vote is a sticking point. Jerusalem was annexed after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip but did not formally annex the rest of the territories.

The government would consider the participation of Jerusalem Arabs in the vote as a rollback of Israeli authority.

So far, Shamir’s proposal for elections is getting a cool reception among Palestinians. Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip attacked the offer because it was not linked with eventual independence of the land.

Vague Statements

Still, a pair of less-than-firm statements by PLO chief Yasser Arafat and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak have led some observers to consider that the rejection is far from final.

Arafat called Shamir’s offer “inappropriate,” language which some local Arab activists found purposefully vague. Mubarak said that international supervision would be needed, which diplomats here saw as less than an out-and-out rejection. Egypt is the only Arab country to recognize Israel diplomatically.

In any case, Palestinians believe that the United States is talking on behalf of Israel. “We consider that when we are talking to Washington, we are talking to Israel,” said Sari Nusseibeh, a pro-PLO activist in Jerusalem.