<i> Palestinian </i> Isn’t a Negotiable Term : Middle East: It’s not Israel’s prerogative to choose its adversary’s negotiating team. There’s no deal without the PLO.

The latest diplomatic maneuvers among Israel, the United States and Egypt have turned the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into a complicated maze, making it difficult even for the most involved experts to know what is going on.

Essentially, the issue has become stuck on Israel’s insistence on controlling the composition of the Palestinian side of any negotiation on the future of the Palestinian people. The Israelis insist even on controlling the definition of Palestinian. (You will recall that Israel still can’t agree on the definition of who is a Jew.) This is no more than a stalling tactic to avoid having to give a substantive answer to the question of exchanging land for peace.

According to Israeli spokesmen, Palestinians are not a nation of 5 million people living in Palestine and in exile, but “inhabitants” of what Israel calls Judea and Samaria. Israel doesn’t want to negotiate with the Palestinians about their future; it wants only a “dialogue” with its subjects who are causing “some trouble, throwing some stones, refusing to pay taxes and going on strike.”

Palestinians have insisted that they be recognized as they are, and that their leadership, the Palestine Liberation Organization, be dealt with directly if the Israelis are genuinely interested in peaceful negotiations. The PLO has even gone an extra step, offering to name a delegation consisting of people living in the occupied territories as well as some from exile, so as to give a proper representation to the Palestinian community as a whole. The Israelis have insisted that no “outside” Palestinians and no one with any connection to the PLO be involved.

Even in public comments, Israeli officials make no attempt to hide their real intention to manipulate Palestinian representation. Foreign Minister Moshe Arens has said that Israel wants to participate in choosing the Palestinian delegation. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has proposed election of a Palestinian delegation from among Israeli-approved candidates. He said plainly, on Israeli television, “We designed the election plan in order to liberate Palestinians from the PLO.”

Hand-picking the representatives of your enemy is never done, except in cases where they are expected to come and sign a surrender. This is exactly what Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin (from the Labor Party, the Likud’s coalition partner) alluded to when he said that the Likud wants Palestinians to come on their hands and knees to the negotiations.

The thinking of Shamir and the Likud is built on faulty premises.

The Israelis expect that their direct involvement in deciding who is a Palestinian, and then choosing some and excluding others, will solve the problem. They expect to have an easier negotiating partner if they ignore Palestinians living in exile, or those living in East Jerusalem, or those held in detention without trial, or those supportive of the PLO (the overwhelming majority). Although no credible Palestinian would agree to this, even if such a distorted representation were found, it would not solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, for it would not be able to carry out or deliver support for any agreement.

Israel and the United States should have learned this lesson in the Lebanon war. In 1983 they signed an agreement with a small faction that was not representative of the Lebanese people. A year later, the agreement was forgotten.

The second faulty premise in Israel’s policy is that it assumes that the Palestinian “inhabitants” are being terrorized to support the PLO, and that deep down they are waiting to be “liberated” from this so-called tyranny. I am not sure whether Shamir actually believes this or asserts it only to support his own policy.

But if Palestinian support for the PLO were in doubt, and if all the public opinion polls and the PLO’s recognition by more than 100 countries were insufficient, the intifada demonstrated the strength of Palestinians’ allegiance. Since the intifada began, in December, 1987, more than 700 Palestinians have been killed, 40,000 arrested, 25,000 injured, 60 expelled; hundreds of thousands have suffered curfews and other punishments and 500 homes have been demolished--all because of their commitment to the PLO and its secret leadership in the occupied territories, the Unified Leadership of the Uprising.

The Palestinian-Israeli puzzle can be made simple. If Israel wants to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Palestinian people, it must stop trying to impose a Palestinian representation of its own. It needs only to listen to people like Cabinet Minister Ezer Weizman, a patriotic Israeli warrior, who has the courage to say things as they should be said: Instead of talking about talking, why not try negotiating directly with the PLO?