Security Council Accepts Israel’s Plan for Exiles

In an intricate display of delicate diplomacy, the Security Council on Friday accepted Israel’s slow-paced, controversial plan to take back nearly 400 deported Palestinians. The U.N. move raised hopes for a resumption of the Mideast peace negotiations.

The maneuver was part of a diplomatic deal in which Israel, though promising no more than it had offered 10 days ago, appeared to accept U.N. authority on the explosive issue.

It did so in an unusual meeting between the Israeli ambassador and the Security Council president behind closed doors. That acceptance, unusual for Israel, satisfied members of the council.

But it did not satisfy Nasser Kidwa, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s observer team at the United Nations.

Describing the U.N. action as “completely meaningless,” Kidwa said, “We . . . are not party to something that was agreed to today.”

He insisted that the Palestinian delegation would not come back to the peace talks until Israel took back all the deportees.

But Moroccan Ambassador Ahmed Snoussi, this month’s Security Council president and the main actor in the U.N. drama with the Israelis, said he had consulted all parties to the dispute, including the Palestinians, “and it is my deepest wish . . . that the peace process will go forward.”

Snoussi told reporters that, while the council still had authority over the matter, there would be no more discussion about it for now. After meeting with Snoussi, Israeli Ambassador Gad Yaacobi said, “We believe that this issue has been removed finally from the agenda of the United Nations and the Security Council.”

To a large extent, the Security Council was accepting the compromise already offered by Israel under pressure from U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher. On Feb. 1, the Israeli Cabinet said it would accept the return of 101 deportees immediately and would bring back the rest in less than a year.

But many U.N. officials questioned whether that plan satisfied the terms of the resolution passed by the Security Council, with American support, on Dec. 18 after Israel deported more than 400 Palestinians. Israel accused them of being members of the extremist Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations and deported them; they ended up in southern Lebanon. The U.N. resolution had called for the deportees’ immediate return.

When Israel refused, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali urged the Security Council to take “whatever measures are required” to force Israel to conform to the resolution. This threat of sanctions--and the Palestinian refusal to resume the peace talks--added to the pressure on Israel to change course.

During the past week, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met with Boutros-Ghali and members of the Security Council. But the element that lifted the curtain on the drama was a letter from Yaacobi to Snoussi.

In the letter, delivered Wednesday, the Israeli ambassador repeated the Israeli government’s plan to take back all the deportees before year’s end.

But, in words of diplomatic significance, he described the offer as “an act of good faith on Israel’s part” and an action that was “consistent with the principle of Security Council Resolution 799,” the measure demanding the deportees’ return.

Supporters of Israel insisted that this amounted to a rare Israeli acceptance of the authority of a U.N. resolution. This view prevailed in the Security Council, but its ambassadors decided not to say so in another resolution or even a written statement.

Instead, the ambassadors instructed Snoussi to meet with Yaacobi to convey their feelings.

The Moroccan ambassador, according to his report to the press later, told the Israeli ambassador that the Security Council reaffirmed its support of Resolution 799, took note of his letter, asked Israel to go further than its first step of bringing 101 deportees back and, most important, urged that all parties return to the peace negotiations.

Yaacobi, according to Snoussi, then “reaffirmed to me . . . that Israel stood ready to implement Resolution 799 according to the modalities that were described in his letter.”

Talking with reporters, Yaacobi did not say that Israel had accepted the resolution. “I said that our position was spelled out in the letter,” he said, “and we hope that we now will be able to renew the talks.”

Snoussi hinted that there was an expectation in the Security Council now that the Israelis would speed up their timetable for returning the deportees.