Israel’s Refusal to Yield on Talks Is Costly for U.S.

Eyeball-to-eyeball with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Clinton blinked.

His administration will set aside the Monday deadline that it imposed for Israeli acceptance of a U.S. peace proposal.

In one sense, the events could be seen as just another failure in a peace process fraught with them of late. But this setback is, in some ways, larger.

The United States, frustrated over the stalled process and particularly unhappy with Israeli intransigence, had used perhaps the mightiest arrow in its quiver--and it fell short. Beyond the obvious immediate impact, the failure weakens the Clinton administration’s leverage over Israel in the future, which in turn makes it less likely Netanyahu will ever accede to American pressure.

The White House plan had been simple: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright deliberately provoked a crisis last Monday when she met in London with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Albright offered a U.S. compromise to settle the long-festering dispute over control of land in the West Bank. Arafat accepted but Netanyahu refused, insisting that he would not negotiate under pressure.

So Albright played the U.S. strong card. She warned that the United States would reassess its role as Middle East mediator unless the Israelis and Palestinians settled the issue--and Tuesday she gave them a deadline of five days, after which the parties could meet for a summit in Washington.

The meeting would have to be held no later than Monday, she said, because she and Clinton were leaving Tuesday for previously scheduled meetings in Europe.

The real purpose of the deadline, U.S. officials said, was to try to force the antagonists to make decisions that they had postponed for months. That tactic worked in Northern Ireland when the feuding parties reached an accord last month, a few hours after a deadline set by U.S. mediator George Mitchell had expired.

But the Israelis simply refused to play that game, announcing that it was too short a time to come up with acceptable solutions to a dispute that has stalemated the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for 14 months.

Acknowledging the inevitable, White House officials said Saturday that the proposed summit will be rescheduled, in effect returning the Middle East stalemate to where it was before Albright tried to get things moving last week.

Israel’s refusal to bend to his will left Clinton with just two choices: Follow through on the threat to end Washington’s traditional role as Middle East peace broker and leave the region’s historic animosities to play themselves out, or back down and admit that the deadline was nothing more than an unsuccessful ploy.

As the events exposed, the United States has far too much at stake to even consider the first option.

Pulling out of the negotiating process is Washington’s ultimate sanction, a sort of diplomatic nuclear weapon.

Netanyahu, like all of his recent predecessors, wants to keep the Americans at the table because they are the only potential broker trusted by both sides. Moreover, the Israeli government cannot afford to permanently antagonize its most powerful ally.

But, like nuclear arms, American withdrawal would be a costly weapon to use, doing incalculable damage to U.S. foreign policy. Now that Clinton has threatened its use--and backed off--the threat cannot be used again, at least not for a while.

As a result, Albright and her aides must return to the time-consuming process of negotiation. With U.S. help, Israel and the Palestinians might ultimately settle their differences.

But it will not be by a U.S.-dictated quick fix.

After Albright’s warning in London, Israeli officials professed shock that the administration embarked on what they considered a reckless course. Exerting a counter-pressure that Israeli governments have used for years, Netanyahu’s forces mobilized leaders of the U.S. Jewish community to demand that Clinton lift the implied ultimatum.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, complained to Albright that the U.S. plan, calling for Israel to turn over to the Palestinian Authority an additional 13% of West Bank land, would damage Israel’s security.

“When it comes to security, that is a determination that only Israel can make,” Hoenlein said in a telephone interview. He said the administration should not “second guess” Netanyahu on security issues.

Sources said Jewish community leaders sought to enlist Vice President Al Gore to urge the administration to back away from a confrontation with Israel. While the Constitution bars Clinton from a third consecutive term as president, Gore is counting on Jewish support in his planned run for the White House in 2000.

Despite the complaints from leaders of major Jewish organizations that the administration was exerting too much pressure on the Netanyahu government, several recent opinion polls, including one by The Times, have shown that Clinton enjoys a high level of support among Jews.

The polls indicate that a majority of American Jews want the administration to press the peace process even if that means pressuring Netanyahu.

In a poll released Friday by the Israel Policy Forum, American Jews endorsed Albright’s now-lifted deadline by 52% to 44%. The same poll showed that 56% endorsed the administration’s decision to invite Netanyahu and Arafat to a summit only if they accepted the U.S. peace plan, while 39% opposed that approach. (The forum, a New York-based think tank, supports the peace process and has been critical of Netanyahu’s hard-line policies.)

Nevertheless, the administration’s decision to issue its own peace proposal was a stark departure from its earlier policy of trying to narrow the differences between the Israelis and the Palestinians without putting its own plan on the table.

The core of the American plan is its call for Israel to withdraw from an additional 13% of the West Bank territory.

Netanyahu has said he is prepared to give up no more than 9%, although some Israeli officials have hinted that an 11% compromise would be possible.

Under the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian peace framework negotiated in Oslo and signed on the White House lawn, Israel is required to cede additional territory to the Palestinians.

But the accord does not spell out the amount of land that must be turned over.

Although Netanyahu balked at the 13% solution, Albright said he advanced some “creative” ideas for resolving the dispute.

In State Department parlance, “creative” often means a face-saving formula to paper over a dispute without necessarily solving it.

In this case, Netanyahu suggested turning the debate away from percentage numbers and toward discussion of specific parcels of land to be given up.

According to sources familiar with the discussion, he said Israel could reach a certain percentage by ceding a large number of small “leopard spot” tracts of land that would be virtually useless to the Palestinians. Or, he said, Israel could give the Palestinians relatively large tracts contiguous with territory already under Palestinian control, although the total percentage might be smaller.

Although the Palestinians did not immediately accept the latest Israeli proposal, U.S. officials were encouraged that Netanyahu was willing to modify his position.

Under those conditions, these officials say, it would be a mistake to end U.S. mediation just because Israel balked at the Monday deadline.

* MIDEAST TALKS POSTPONED: U.S. officials announce that the hoped-for Mideast summit on Monday won’t take place. A10