Baker: Call Us If You’re Serious : * Exasperation Underscores Deterioration

It’s getting to be a habit. Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir speaks his mind, has his words quoted in the press, sees them provoke a national and international furor. And then he instructs his spokesman to say that it was all a misunderstanding.

It happened in January, when Shamir spoke publicly about the need for a “Big Israel” to absorb hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jewish immigrants. That description was widely interpreted as emphasizing Shamir’s commitment--which he has never tried to hide--to perpetual Israeli control over the West Bank, a position that is the antithesis of good-faith negotiations toward accommodation with the Palestinians.

And it happened again this week. In a newspaper interview, Shamir posed unhelpful new terms for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, specifically demanding advance agreement that there could be only limited autonomy for the Arab populace of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Shamir’s condition provoked an exasperated Secretary of State James A. Baker III to use some of the bluntest language a U.S. official has directed at Israel since the Suez crisis of 1956.

The response from Shamir’s office, once again, was to deny that the premier had spoken the words attributed to him. That denial isn’t plausible. The Shamir interview appeared in the English-language Jerusalem Post, which under its new owners has become a strong and knowing supporter of Shamir’s policies. Moreover, the gist of Shamir’s remarks was fully consistent both with the longstanding expansionist ideology of his Likud Party and with the hard-line sentiments of his new multi-party coalition.

The Jerusalem Post comments may have been the last straw for the Bush Administration. In testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Baker made no effort to hide his frustration. Clearly the Administration feels it has been misled by Shamir as it has worked to get Israeli-Palestinian talks started. If Shamir’s conditional approach to negotiations prevails, “there won’t be any dialogue and there won’t be any peace,” Baker said. He told the committee that “we got extraordinarily close” to agreement for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks earlier this year, only to run into stonewall resistance from Shamir. Then came Baker’s blunt but unmistakable message to Israel: “When you’re serious about peace, call us.”

Yesterday the White House and the State Department tried to put the best possible face on Baker’s comments, suggesting that they were aimed at both sides in the controversy. No doubt they were. But there can be no doubt either, from the context of Baker’s remarks, that Washington holds Israel chiefly to blame for the continuing deadlock.

It’s out in the open now, and there’s no way to plead misunderstanding about what’s been said.