NEWS ANALYSIS : Christopher Visit a Dilemma for Arabs

As U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher embarks next week on his first Middle East tour, the Arabs find themselves in a dilemma: how to persuade the Americans to broker a better deal on the issue of the Palestinians deported from Israel without having to play their own trump card--staying away from the next round of peace talks with Israel.

Almost no one wants to be responsible for breaking down the talks, tentatively set to resume in April, and at the same time almost no one among the Arabs likes the U.S.-brokered compromise that would allow 101 of the nearly 400 deportees to return home from Lebanon right away, and the rest before the end of the year. The Arabs suffered another blow Friday, when the U.N. Security Council accepted Israel’s offer.

Clearly, Arabs hope they can talk Christopher into a better deal, and just as important, they hope the visit will provide clues as to how the Clinton Administration’s views on the Middle East will take shape. Where does President Clinton see America’s most important strategic allies in the region? How hard is he willing to come down on both sides to see the peace process work? Is he serious about issues such as disarmament and continuing foreign aid? What is he going to do about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein?

Only when they get the answers to questions like these, say the Arabs, will they be able to begin formulating their own strategy for dealing with the new Washington.

A LOOK AT CLINTON: The Arabs were already deeply suspicious of Clinton the candidate when he declared during the election campaign that Jerusalem should remain the united capital of Israel.

That, combined with strong support for the Democratic ticket from the American Jewish lobby, raised fears that Clinton would fail to exert the kind of pressure on Israel that the Arabs view as vital to getting meaningful results from the peace talks. The Americans’ failure to push Israel into agreeing to take back all the Palestinian deportees was viewed by many Arabs as a confirmation of their fears.

At the same time, Arab leaders say they realize that former President George Bush took the credit for getting the ceremonial part of the peace talks going and left the hard part--obtaining results--for his successor. They are heartened by Clinton’s promises to put fairness and human rights at the top of his international agenda.

“Regardless of statements that were made here and there (about Jerusalem and other issues), the Arabs are willing to consider those statements as part of the election file. However, they cannot simply relax and throw flowers,” one Arab official said. “The Arabs want to discover the nature and essence of Washington’s policy. The hope here is that Clinton, this young man with a background of liberal ideas, would not believe in the occupation of foreign land, and that he will find occupation an alien principle.”

THE ISSUES: First on the agenda is resumption of the peace talks. The Palestinians have already signaled that they won’t be attending unless there is an agreement to immediately return all the deportees, whom Israel identifies as supporters of the Islamic fundamentalist groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas, to their homes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Syria and Lebanon have also signaled their rejection of the Israeli compromise that would allow 101 of the deportees to return immediately, although they have not actually said they would boycott the talks if there is no better agreement. Neither has Jordan.

Yet senior Arab officials say they believe that this time the Palestine Liberation Organization is serious when it says it will instruct Palestinian delegates to stay away from the talks if there is no satisfactory resolution on the deportees.

Indeed, the PLO has not been happy with the progress of the talks so far, and Egyptian and Palestinian diplomats will be raising a number of substantive issues on the handling of the talks when they meet with Christopher.

First and foremost, they are unhappy with Israeli proposals so far for limited autonomy for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and want Washington to push Israel to offer Palestinians more meaningful control over more territory in any interim arrangements.

The Palestinians, who will meet with Christopher during his three-day stop in Jerusalem, will also be raising the issue of when to discuss the status of Jerusalem and seeking a more direct role for the PLO in the peace process. Israel’s new law allowing contact with the PLO, Palestinians believe, should at least be a green light for resumption of the dialogue between the United States and the PLO, even if the PLO does not sit on the Palestinian delegation.

Finally, all the Arabs want to know what the Clinton Administration has to say about the key U.N. resolutions governing the peace talks--242 and 338--which call for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories. Does Washington interpret that to mean Israel must withdraw from all of the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights, and if so, is it prepared to put forward its interpretation as a means of moving the talks along?

POLITICAL BACKGROUND: Syria, Lebanon and Jordan are eager to resume the peace talks, but not at the expense of appearing to abandon the Palestinian cause on the slopes of the Lebanese mountains, where the Palestinian deportees are stranded.

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat is also eager to get back to the table, but he faces rising opposition within the Palestinian rank and file to the idea of continuing a peace process that so far appears to be producing no results.

At the forefront of the naysayers is Hamas, and Arafat must appear to be looking out for the interests of the radicals within his constituency if he wants to remain securely in charge. That in part was behind Arafat’s recent visit to Baghdad to meet Hussein. Although Arafat’s support for the Iraqi president during the Persian Gulf crisis was the reason for most of his current problems with the moderate Arab Gulf countries, his visit to Baghdad made it clear that pleasing his own radical element is what concerns him now. Arafat cannot be seen to be abandoning the deportees; at the same time, he faces the difficult task of brokering a deal to save them that will be acceptable to Hamas. For its part, Hamas feels no urgency about salvaging the peace process; indeed, it has been opposed to the peace talks from the beginning.

THE PROSPECTS: The Egyptians hope Christopher’s visit will provide an opportunity to broker a new pact on the deportees that will allow everyone to save face and go back to the peace table.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amir Moussa described the proposal to take back 101 deportees as “a step in the right direction which has to be followed immediately by other steps to solve the problem.” But Egyptians were disheartened when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin--clarifying some things the Arabs thought would have been better left unsaid--stated that Israel still had a right to deport Palestinians and had no intention of returning any of the other deportees sooner.

Most of the Arabs realize that Israel has left itself no room to about-face, to say it will take back all the deportees right away. At the most, they hope Christopher can help consider a new package that would allow more of the remaining deportees to return sooner--a stepped-up timetable.

But statements out of Washington this week that the U.S. government considers the present compromise “a significant and constructive approach to resolving the problem” left only a little room for optimism in the Arab world.

“If the U.S. stays with this position, no Arab will be convinced that they are able to deal with this in Washington, and there will be doubt that the U.S. can really contribute to the peace process later,” one Arab official said. “Even if Arab leaders were to accept this (compromise), they will never be able to convince the people in the mountains. And the result will be weakening Arab leaders internally, tightening opposition and fundamentalism, destroying the PLO and strengthening Hamas. Is this what America wants?”

Christopher’s Mission

Secretary of State Warren Christopher will travel to the Middle East Wednesday to seek the reopening of the Middle East peace talks in April. As of this week, U.S. officials said, he plans stops in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria.