Shamir’s Party Trying to Calm Tempers, Adopt Stance on Peace Talks

Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his divided Likud Party ministers on Monday night resumed their internal struggle over how to answer the call by their Labor Party coalition partners and Washington to talk peace with the Palestinians.

Specifically at issue is the Israeli government’s response to an American formula for choosing a Palestinian panel for the talks, which would be held in Cairo. Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, the Labor leader, has threatened to withdraw his party from the coalition if the decision is not taken by Wednesday.

Shamir reportedly favors Washington’s formula for getting the peace process back on track, but he has not publicly endorsed it.

Rhetoric and tempers have been rising for a week. Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Likud man and an opponent of the plan, spoke for the right wing when he told Israeli Television:

“If we agree, we will endanger the existence of the state. That is not a peace process. It’s a trap. We are going to Cairo with an American pistol at one temple and a Labor pistol at the other.”

Foreign Minister Moshe Arens, also with Likud, told Parliament on Monday that two principles would not be abandoned: no negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organization and the indivisibility of Jerusalem, including the Arab-populated eastern sector annexed after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

Shamir, who introduced the basic peace plan last spring, not only faces the fateful decision of talks with Palestinians, which his plan proposed, but the prospect of a coalition collapse--with his party divided--if no decision is taken. In the event of a collapse, Israeli political analysts say, Peres might try to form a “thin government” between Labor and the small religious parties, leaving Shamir and Likud out in the cold.

Under the political and nationalistic pressures, the target date of Wednesday for a coalition decision has begun to slip. A meeting of the government’s Inner Cabinet, the top Likud and Labor ministers, remains scheduled for Wednesday, but leaders on both sides say more time may be needed.

A positive decision would lead to a proposed meeting in Washington among Arens, U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Egyptian Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel Meguid, who would represent the Palestinian side in choosing a panel for the Cairo talks.

Meanwhile, 34 Palestinians from the occupied territories released a statement declaring: “The Palestine Liberation Organization alone has the right both to form and to announce any Palestinian delegation to the peace dialogue.”

The signatories, including prominent Palestinian figures Faisal Husseini and Sari Nusseibeh, are “preparing the Palestinian house” in taking a stand flatly opposed by both Israeli parties, Mahdi Abdul Hadi, a Palestinian political analyst, said in an interview.