Barak Urges Bush to Carry the Torch on Peace Process

Conceding that it will be “almost impossible” to conclude a peace agreement before the end of President Clinton’s term, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Monday urged the incoming Bush administration to continue mediation to resolve a standoff that he again warned could lead to regional war.

In a closed-circuit television address to U.S. foreign policy opinion leaders, Barak said that if he retains power in a Feb. 6 special election, he expects to preside over a total separation of Israel and Palestinians, either as the result of a peace treaty or by Israeli diktat.

“We are looking forward to cooperation with the new administration the moment President Bush comes to office,” said Barak, whose remarks were transmitted from Israel to simultaneous meetings in Washington and New York of the Council on Foreign Relations, a nongovernmental advisory group.

At the same time, Israel’s caretaker prime minister emphasized that the volatile region will not wait for George W. Bush and his foreign policy team to conduct a thorough review of U.S. policy.

If there is no Israeli-Palestinian agreement soon, Barak said, the tensions could ignite a new war between Israel and several Arab states.

“We may be dragged into another regional conflict,” he said. “We will win it because we are stronger, but we will have to bury our dead . . . before reaching exactly the same agreement that could have been had” through the current round of negotiations.

Praise for Clinton, Criticism for Arafat

Barak’s presentation provided a counterpart to Clinton’s speech to a Jewish gathering in New York on Sunday night.

Barak said Clinton’s plan, which the president discussed in public for the first time, has brought the two sides closer to peace than they have ever been. But he said there is little chance to go the rest of the way before Clinton leaves office Jan. 20.

After Israel decided to accept Clinton’s plan as the basis for negotiations, Barak said, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat “dragged his feet for 12 more days, rendering achievement of an agreement almost impossible.”

In lieu of a treaty, Barak said, he would support a formal but nonbinding statement by Clinton outlining the positions of the parties. The objective would be to establish a baseline from which to resume negotiations later. But Clinton acknowledged Sunday that Bush would not be bound by the provisions of his plan. And Barak is trailing badly in public opinion polls in his election contest against right-wing opposition leader Ariel Sharon, who has declared that he will not be obligated to uphold any agreement reached by Barak.

Barak’s objective Monday seemed to be to paint a frightening, “worst-case” scenario of what could happen if the peace process does not resume.

He said Israel and the Palestinians are headed for separate futures on separate territory. If the separation is the product of a negotiated agreement, he said, the Palestinians will get “their own state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with Al Quds [the Arabic term for Jerusalem] as its capital.”

If there is no agreement, he said, Israel will impose a unilateral separation, because “we do not intend to rule over another people for the next 33 years, as we have for the last 33 years.”

But he left little doubt that without a peace agreement, the Palestinians will wind up with a number of small, economically isolated islands surrounded by Israeli territory.

Palestinian Labor Force Would Be Cut

Barak also said that he would end the current system that allows Palestinian laborers to work in Israel, receiving paychecks that are vital to the Palestinian economy. He said Israel would reduce the number of Palestinian workers by 3% or 4% a month, leading to a total ban within two years.

Moreover, Barak said, without an agreement, his government would not dismantle any Jewish settlements in the West Bank or Gaza. By contrast, he said, if Israel and the Palestinians reached a peace accord on the basis of the Clinton plan, Israel would annex the settlements built close to Israel proper and abandon the rest.

Following Barak’s presentation, Peter Rodman, a veteran Republican foreign policy expert, remarked: “He did not sound like a man in the middle of an active negotiation. What is going on now is not a real negotiation. It is a classical minuet of onus-shifting.”

Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland specialist on the Middle East, said Barak’s plan for unilateral separation would increase the level of Arab-Israeli violence, not reduce it, as Barak claims.

Israel would have to increase its military presence near Palestinian communities to protect the isolated Jewish settlements that would remain, he said.