Finally Israel Looks Serious--Anyone Else? : Perhaps Mideast talks will now get down to real business

The Middle East peace talks are scheduled to resume in Washington this week as Arab and Israeli negotiators meet for the sixth time since they first began warily circling each other last October. This time, though, look for some notable differences. For one thing the talks are expected to run for four weeks, a prelude, or so sponsoring American officials hope, to making the negotiations more or less continuous and truly result-oriented. For another, even though the basic game remains the same, some of the rules have been significantly revised.

Israel’s national elections two months ago produced a new government in Jerusalem whose approach to trying to end the long and enormously costly conflict between Israelis and their neighbors differs dramatically from its predecessor’s. The hard-line government presided over by Yitzhak Shamir, as the former prime minister admitted in an interview after his defeat, in fact sought to prolong the talks indefinitely while proceeding at full speed to expand Israeli settlement in the disputed West Bank. This was wholly in keeping with the Likud government’s consistent view that the West Bank was Israel’s by right and that not a single inch of it would be yielded in any peace agreement.

THE CONTRAST: The new government, under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, has frozen nearly all new settlement activity, signaled its readiness to make territorial compromises as part of the process of reaching peace agreements and embraced the outline for a political accommodation with the Palestinians that was in fact arrived at in the Camp David accords nearly 14 years ago. To that end, it plans to offer new proposals for interim Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. That will likely involve a proposal for elections next spring to a self-governing Palestinian administrative council. Additionally, Israel indicates it’s also ready to consider joint Israeli-Palestinian control over land and water in the disputed territory. Both are major departures from the stated policy of the Shamir government.

THE OBJECTION: The Arab response in advance of the resumed talks is that none of these changes go far enough. The Arabs say that all settlement expansion must be halted--Rabin has left the door open to settlements that serve a “security” need--that the goal of an independent Palestinian state must be recognized, that the strategic Golan Heights, captured from Syria after it went to war against Israel in 1967, must be given back entirely. These are maximum demands. They are not--at this point and in the absence of an Arab readiness to make concessions that address Israel’s legitimate security concerns--realistic goals.

But arriving at realistic goals is precisely what negotiations are about. The resumed talks, in the wake of Israel’s elections, provide opportunities that the Palestinians, the Jordanians, yes, even the traditionally inflexible Syrians would be unwise to ignore. The biggest difference is this: Under the Rabin government, Israel appears to be entirely serious about wanting to break the impasse and make rapid negotiating progress. Israel, beyond doubt, will still be an extremely tough negotiator. But this time around there’s every reason to believe that its aim is not to stall but to succeed.