‘Yugoslav-Like Situation’ Feared in Israel, Peres Says

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told American Jewish leaders Sunday that Israel must make peace with the Palestinians or face in the future a “Yugoslav-like situation in our own country” that could endanger the existence of the Jewish state.

Beginning the first visit to Washington by a senior Israeli official since the November U.S. elections, Peres also said that the new Israeli Labor-led government is “extremely confident” that it will be able to forge a close working partnership with the Clinton Administration to bring about peace in the Middle East.

Peres, who will be seeing Secretary of State Warren Christopher and other Administration officials Tuesday, broke no new ground in what had been billed beforehand as a “major policy address” before the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.

But it was clear from the conciliatory and hopeful tenor of his remarks that Peres was seeking to establish at the outset of his visit a new footing for U.S.-Israeli relations strained in the past by the George Bush Administration’s differences with Labor’s right-wing Likud predecessors.

Efforts to ease those strains and establish what Peres said should be a “strategic and political partnership” between the two new governments in Washington and Jerusalem were delayed by the prolonged crisis that erupted in the wake of Israel’s expulsion of more than 400 Palestinians to southern Lebanon two months ago.

Israeli officials said they hope the crisis has finally been defused with the U.N. Security Council’s endorsement Friday of a U.S.-brokered compromise under which the deportees will gradually be allowed to return over the space of a year. Peres notably failed to even mention the deportees in his speech, an omission that Israeli observers said underscored the Labor government’s hope that the controversy finally can be set aside.

While he did not address Arab demands that all the deportees be allowed to return home before another round of peace talks begins, Peres sounded a conciliatory note on negotiations with the Palestinians.

“We understand that peace calls for compromise and we are ready to play our share, not only to enter into a general compromise but to (make) territorial (concessions) as well,” Peres said. He added that Israel does not want to “dominate” the Palestinians and is ready to let them “run their own lives with their own government” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“We must take care,” Peres added, “not to create a Yugoslav-like situation in our own country. We are very near it . . . and it (threatens) to endanger all the miracles we have achieved so far.”

However, Syria, he said, “must come down to earth” and accept Israel’s insistence that territorial concessions on the Golan Heights follow a peace agreement and security guarantees, rather than the other way around.

Asked by a member of the audience if he is concerned that the Clinton Administration might move to cut the $3 billion a year in foreign aid that the United States gives to Israel, Peres said that U.S. aid already is being cut back by inflation and is worth 30% less now than it was in the mid-1980s.

He noted that Washington still spends more to keep troops in Europe and Asia to defend its allies on those continents, adding: “Give me peace and I shall give up foreign aid.”