Arafat May Raise Issue of Statehood in Address to U.N.

Israel has explicitly warned him not to do it. The United States says it too would oppose any such move.

But as Yasser Arafat prepares to step to the podium at the United Nations today to deliver his first address to the General Assembly as a head of government, it still is unclear whether he will use the occasion to announce his plans to declare a Palestinian state in barely seven months’ time.

The Palestinian Authority president already has said that unless there is significant progress toward an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, he intends to make a unilateral declaration of statehood on May 4, 1999, the date marking the end of a transition period set by the interim peace accords reached in Oslo in 1993.

However, eleventh-hour talks early today between Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright led some diplomats to believe that progress in the stalled peace negotiations was at hand, and that the Palestinian leader might tone down his remarks.

Still, an announcement from the stage of the United Nations would increase the stakes sharply.

“If he goes forward with the announcement--and it’s hard to imagine why he would give up the opportunity to drum up international support--it will make it much harder for either the Palestinians or the Israeli government to back down,” said Joseph Alpher, head of the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee and an expert on political and strategic affairs.

However, other observers suggest that Arafat might bow to U.S. and Israeli pressure during a new American push to revive the peace talks and might keep his remarks relatively muted on the sensitive issue of Palestinian statehood.

In the last few days, the Clinton administration has launched an intensive effort to reach a deal on an overdue agreement for a further Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank, taking advantage of the presence in New York for the annual opening of the General Assembly of both Arafat and Netanyahu.

Today’s early morning developments could set the stage for Arafat and Netanyahu to have a three-way meeting with President Clinton at the White House today. Clinton was scheduled to meet with Netanyahu today and Arafat on Tuesday.

U.S. officials have said that while a comprehensive accord appears unlikely by early this week, they believe agreement is possible on some of the issues that have kept peace talks deadlocked since March 1997. And Arafat could well decide he does not want to risk being blamed if the sides fail to achieve an accord, these officials said.

But even if Arafat refrains from referring explicitly to the May 4 deadline, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians believe that a Palestinian declaration of independence next year is all but certain.

The reasons, they say, range from a fundamental distrust that has developed between Netanyahu and Arafat, making headway toward peace unlikely, to the Palestinian leader’s own need to show his people that five years of peace talks with Israel have produced tangible results.

“He needs to come back to the Palestinians with something real, that shows that he and they made the right choice” in entering negotiations with Israel, said Khalil Shikaki, director of the Center for Palestine Research and Studies, an independent think tank in Nablus.

“May 4 is a moment of truth for him, a defining moment for him and the Palestinian cause,” Shikaki said.

In recent public statements and conversations with Israeli opposition legislators, Arafat has said he would prefer that the declaration come with Israel’s blessing and at the end of final status negotiations. But with the target date approaching, he may feel he has no other choice, Shikaki and others said.

“It’s a step that will be made out of desperation,” said Palestinian journalist and political analyst Ghassan Khatib. “It’s a function of the terrible state of the peace process, which for Palestinians is about ending the occupation and gaining a state. People can tolerate a slow peace process but not one that is not moving at all.”

In his own speech last week before the United Nations, Netanyahu sought to head off Arafat’s announcement, warning that a unilateral declaration would constitute a “fundamental violation of the Oslo accords” and cause a collapse of the peace process.

Netanyahu also said that a unilateral proclamation of statehood could prompt similarly one-sided actions from Israel. Officials in Jerusalem have said that the government could decide to annex West Bank land still under Israeli control or even try to reconquer areas that already have been handed to Arafat’s government.

Aware of the risks, Israelis across the political spectrum have expressed concern over the possibility that Arafat will decide to announce his plans today. Labor Party opposition leader Ehud Barak and President Ezer Weizman, among others, have sought to dissuade him.

Arafat told Labor Party legislator Yossi Beilin, who visited him last week in Gaza City, that he plans to declare sovereignty only over areas under his control, but he did not specify whether that would include areas under shared authority.

While it is unclear how Israel would respond to a declaration, almost any scenario is fraught with the potential for violence.

The Israeli government would come under pressure to send troops to protect Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas. And as both sides tried to cope with the suddenly changed reality, “clashes could break out in 100 different places,” Alpher noted.

Military and police officials for both sides acknowledge that they are preparing for the possibility of large-scale conflict near the May 4 target date. Beilin has proposed that Israel head off a unilateral declaration by stating, by next January, that it will recognize a demilitarized Palestinian state and withdraw immediately from enough West Bank land to bring the Palestinian total to 50%. In exchange, the Palestinians would agree to extend the deadline by 18 months.

But he doubts that either side would accept such a plan.

“Unless something changes, after May 4, it’s a different world for all of us,” he said.