Israel Rejects Egypt as Intifada Mediator

Spurning an Egyptian offer to mediate with the Palestine Liberation Organization to end the uprising in the occupied territories, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Arens declared Monday that “anything which enhances the image of the PLO is not a positive development in the peace process.”

“There is no need for mediation,” Arens insisted, promoting instead the Israeli peace plan, which proposes direct negotiations with non-PLO representatives elected by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian offer was carried by Butros Butros Ghali, deputy foreign minister, who wound up a two-day visit here Monday. The mediation proposal was contained in a message from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

In a Monday morning meeting with a group of Palestinians in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, Butros Ghali said he is “ready to be a good and active postman.” He was the highest-ranking Egyptian official to visit Israel since the uprising began in December, 1987.

Later in the day, he met with Shamir and Arens in Jerusalem, both of whom repeated the long-held Israeli position against negotiations or any other contact with the PLO.

“I think the Egyptians understand that we are convinced,” Arens told reporters after the meeting.

In meetings with Arens and Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres on Sunday, Butros Ghali argued that PLO leader Yasser Arafat had made a major move for peace at last November’s meeting of the PLO National Council in Algiers, which called for the formation of a Palestinian state on the basis of U.N. resolutions that recognize the existence of Israel.

Likens It to Sadat Offer

Butros Ghali compared the PLO two-state strategy and professed renunciation of terrorism to the positions of the late President Anwar Sadat, who led Egypt to become the first, and so far only, Arab nation to make peace with Israel.

Arens, however, said that the PLO remains “the major obstacle to progress for peace in the area.”

Meanwhile, the intifada, the Palestinian Arab uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, entered its 19th month over the weekend, continuing to fuel a political debate of growing truculence.

Shamir’s peace plan is under attack by rightists in his Likud Party who reportedly have forced the prime minister to convene a Central Committee meeting July 2. Press reports Monday said no agenda has been set, but the government’s handling of the uprising and the peace plan itself are considered certain topics.

Likud ministers Ariel Sharon, David Levy and Yitzhak Modai lead a rightist camp averse to elections and to any plan that would trade land for peace, particularly under the pressure of the intifada. Even supporters of the plan, including Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin of the Labor Party, cling to a hard line on Arab violence in the occupied territories.

In a radio interview Sunday, Rabin advocated “punishing precise targets.” The troubles can be curbed, he said, “the more we improve the means, the tools (and) find ways of more pointed and harsher punishments than those we had until now.”

In the 18 months of the uprising, about 500 Palestinians have been killed, the vast majority by Israeli soldiers. Nineteen Israelis have died in intifada-related incidents.

Neither side shows any sign of bending. A leaflet issued Sunday by the Unified National Leadership for the Uprising in the Occupied Territories, a pro-PLO group of anonymous Palestinian officials, called for general strikes in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem on June 17, 20 and 23.

The group opposes Shamir’s election plan, demanding instead support for the PLO’s call for an international peace conference and the formation of a Palestinian state in the territories. Israeli leftists, meanwhile, have staged a procession of demonstrations against the government’s handling of the intifada. Amos Oz, a left-wing author, assailed the leadership and the army in a weekend speech in Tel Aviv, declaring, “Israel’s government of occupation in the territories has become a monster.”