U.S. Sees Persuasion as Key to Stalled Talks

Although President Clinton’s attempt to restart the Middle East peace process is a high-stakes wager of his personal credibility, he does not plan to accede to demands to get tough with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in meetings here this week, senior U.S. officials say.

Clinton has summoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a White House session Tuesday and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to one on Thursday in an attempt to revive peace talks that have been stalled for more than a year.

Yet despite a crescendo of demands for him to lean heavily on one leader or the other, or both, he plans to use more persuasion than muscle, the officials say.

The president will press Washington’s agenda for Israel to turn over to the Palestinians a “significant and credible” slice of the West Bank and stop building Jewish settlements in disputed territories, while demanding from the Palestinians a “100% effort” to stop terrorist attacks on Israelis, the officials say.

In advance of the meetings, Clinton and his top aides have met with leaders of the American Jewish community, telling them that he will focus on hints of possible reconciliation buried deep in the confrontational rhetoric coming from both Israelis and Palestinians.

Participants in those meetings say Clinton has not tried to line up Jewish support for a harder line against Israel nor for any other basic change in the administration’s approach.

Unlike during earlier rough spots in the peace process, the American Jewish community is not rallying to show unconditional support for Israeli policy.

Despite considerable differences in emphasis, Jewish groups--ranging from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to Americans for Peace Now--are urging Clinton to call on both Netanyahu and Arafat to meet their obligations under the framework peace agreement negotiated in Oslo and signed on the White House lawn in 1993.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and U.S. peace envoy Dennis B. Ross have pressed Netanyahu and Arafat during the past several months but have met with defiance from Netanyahu and his Likud-led Cabinet and with a passive-aggressive failure to comply by Arafat and the Palestinians.

Officials acknowledge that the White House meetings are intended to raise the stakes. Even if Clinton says the same words, it will presumably be more difficult for Netanyahu and Arafat to ignore him than it is for them to dismiss Albright and Ross.

Nevertheless, if Clinton fails--and the chances of success are not high--it could plunge the peace process into an even deeper crisis. Why, then, did the Clinton administration decide to bring the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the White House?

Middle East experts both in and out of the administration say Clinton had to act personally, despite the risk of failure, because a continuation of the present stalemate was unacceptable.

“Neither party seems to be able to cope these days,” said Richard Murphy, the State Department’s chief Middle East specialist during the Reagan administration.

“There is such a vacuum now that there is a clear need for American leadership. . . . There are a lot of people in the region who are watching this and wondering if Uncle Sam is going to walk away. That would be the worst signal.”

Also, a senior administration official said, the White House felt that the meetings Albright held last month with each leader “succeeded in narrowing their differences somewhat, but both sides needed to hear from the president. The purpose is to give the president the opportunity to outline his thinking on what it takes to narrow the differences.”

Yet the administration does not expect any breakthrough. If it did, the White House would have called for a three-way meeting, the official said.

The arrangement for separate meetings also underlines the corrosive dislike and distrust that exist between Arafat and Netanyahu--and that U.S. officials say are more responsible for the stalemate than substantive differences on policy.

In advance of Netanyahu’s departure for Washington, the Israeli Cabinet issued a hard-line manifesto saying that Israel will not turn over to the Palestinians any more West Bank territory--as it is required to do under the Oslo accords--until the Palestinians meet all of their obligations under the peace agreement.

The Cabinet action was widely interpreted as more of an effort to justify Israel’s refusal to move than a prod to the Palestinians to keep their end of the bargain.

Joel Singer, chief legal advisor to the Israeli delegation at Oslo, put it metaphorically: “If I tell my kid he can use the car if he does his homework, do I want him to do his homework or am I praying he will not do his homework so I won’t have to let him have the car?”

And Tom Smerling, head of the Washington office of the Israel Policy Forum, a group that is often critical of Netanyahu, said: “The mission of the Israeli far right is to set standards for Palestinian compliance that they know cannot possibly be met. It is a little like ‘The Godfather’ in reverse: They want Bibi [Netanyahu] to make the Palestinians an offer they can’t accept.”

A senior administration official conceded that some members of Netanyahu’s Cabinet probably do hope that the Palestinians will reject Israel’s conditions, so that no more territory will have to be transferred. But he said the administration considers Netanyahu’s position to be tough but essentially fair.

Another senior official said it was a “remarkable transition” for Netanyahu’s Likud Party to go from its traditional position of rejecting any sort of territorial compromise on the West Bank to its present stance, which envisions a partial Israeli withdrawal if conditions are met.

“Both sides put out platforms which state things in tough terms,” the official said. “But if you read between the lines, there [are] also implicitly ways to move forward.”

Meanwhile, a number of U.S. Jewish groups have been offering advice to the parties through newspaper advertisements and other means. An open letter to Netanyahu and Arafat from Americans for Peace Now admonishes: “Neither of you has followed through satisfactorily on your fundamental Oslo obligations.” The organization says Clinton should press both sides to keep their promises.

Even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the key organization in the pro-Israel lobby, has said it will not object if Clinton presses Israel for a credible withdrawal from the West Bank--provided that he specifically links the hand-over of territory to effective Palestinian efforts to stop terrorism against Israel.

On Capitol Hill, 23 House members signed a letter to Netanyahu last month pledging support for his “efforts to resist pressures to cede ever larger portions of Judea, Samaria and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority.” But last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and other senators were lining up signatures on a letter to Clinton calling for evenhanded U.S. mediation.

“The process will most certainly falter if both parties are unwilling to take the substantive steps necessary for resolving their differences,” the Senate group wrote.

In spite of administration efforts to lower expectations, many Middle East experts outside the government are going further, saying the talks may accomplish so little that they will make matters worse.

“It is always a problem when the president of the United States appears to be unable to make positive movements in the Middle East,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a White House Middle East expert in the Reagan administration.

“This comes at a particularly awkward time, with the Iraq crisis looming and the confusion over Iran. Seen from the Arab world, the breakdown in the peace process weakens the American argument that we have to be tough with Saddam Hussein.”

Diplomats at the United Nations say Clinton’s reluctance to pressure Netanyahu has undercut Washington’s ability to line up support for a tough stance against Iraq in the Security Council.

“The Arab countries and some others in the developing world feel there’s a bit of a [U.S.] double standard when it comes to Iraq and Israel,” with the U.S. prepared to overlook Israel’s lapses in adhering to the Oslo peace process while demanding that Iraq stick closely to U.N. resolutions governing arms reduction, a Western diplomat said.

Times staff writer Craig Turner at the United Nations contributed to this report.

* NO CABINET DECISION: Israel’s Cabinet delays a decision on the scope of a troop pullback in the West Bank. A12