Netanyahu’s Intentions Are Unclear--Even to Israelis

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu having spurned an American invitation to peace talks in Washington this week, the question arises: Is he actually trying to cut a better deal for Israel on the current U.S. initiative, or is his aim to scuttle the entire Oslo peace process?

Nearly two years into Netanyahu’s premiership, the answer is still unclear.

While the Israeli leader has never hidden his aversion to the step-by-step peace process begun secretly in Norway in 1993 and formalized that year with a landmark agreement signed on the White House lawn, Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he will abide by it.

To some extent, he has. Although both Israelis and Palestinians endlessly debate the degree to which the other side has violated the letter or spirit of their agreements, Netanyahu has kept promises made by his predecessors to hand over most of the West Bank city of Hebron to the Palestinians and to release female Palestinian prisoners.

But now, with no real progress toward peace for 14 months, and Netanyahu so far rejecting a U.S. plan to reinvigorate the negotiations, it is uncertain whether the faltering Oslo process will even continue--and whether Netanyahu would regret or welcome it if it expired.

The question has acquired even greater urgency with repeated warnings from U.S. officials that the Clinton administration may reexamine its central role in the negotiations, apparently ending a rare period of direct mediation, unless substantive progress is made.

“Either he agrees with the position of his own right wing and wants to end this process altogether, or he genuinely wants progress [toward peace] but is troubled by the threat of the right wing to bring down his government and is unable to act,” said Joseph Alpher, who heads the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee. “But I don’t pretend to know the answer any better today than I did two years ago.”

The U.S. proposal calls for the Jewish state to hand over an additional 13% of West Bank land to the Palestinians. Several right-wing members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition have warned against a troop withdrawal from more than 9% of the West Bank territory; others have threatened to bring the government down if he carries out any pullback whatsoever.

“Does he want to bury the peace process altogether or make it succeed and just get a better deal out of it for Israel? I can’t tell,” said Alpher, a veteran analyst of Israeli affairs. “And to what extent Netanyahu has articulated his strategy to himself, I’m not at all sure.”

Many others seem confused too by the brinkmanship, by the flurries of diplomatic activity and by the endless “critical moments” that have characterized Israel’s approach to negotiations and that often seem to dissipate without discernible progress.

“What does the prime minister want to attain in his negotiations with the Palestinians?” columnist Amos Gilboa asked Sunday in the Maariv newspaper. “What’s his political objective? I myself, a citizen of Israel, haven’t a clue.”

The contradictory signals continued over the weekend. Netanyahu and his aides publicly repeated their insistence that Israel could not accept the American package, which centers on the 13% withdrawal in exchange for concrete steps by the Palestinians to combat terrorism. On Friday, Netanyahu had turned down a conditional American invitation to attend a Washington summit beginning today based on the proposals.

But in private, Israeli officials held long meetings in Jerusalem with visiting U.S. peace envoy Dennis B. Ross on “creative solutions” that would enable them to meet the American percentage demand--or come very close. Such an agreement could clear the way for the Washington meeting to be rescheduled, perhaps by the end of the month, Israeli and U.S. officials said. Ross left Israel for Washington on Sunday afternoon.

Among the ideas that formed part of the discussion, Israeli officials said, was a suggestion that Israel cede 9% of the territory to the Palestinians, with an additional 4% “deferred” against Palestinian fulfillment of a long-standing obligation to crack down on extremists.

With the date for a new Washington summit tentatively set for May 28, it remains a mystery whether an agreement is actually likely to come about or whether the latest flurry of talks will lead, yet again, to more delays.