Diplomacy Search for Partners

Even during one of the holiest times of the year, the bloodshed would not stop in the Holy Land. From secret locations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip last week, leaders of the Palestinian uprising issued leaflets addressed to their stone-throwing followers. The order: step up the violence on Land Day, the twelfth anniversary of the deaths of six Israeli Arabs who were killed while they protested Israeli government confiscation of their property. Anticipating trouble, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin took the unprecedented step of sealing off the West Bank and Gaza for three days. He warned of harsher measures to come if the unrest did not end soon. Challenged Rabin: “Let’s confront each other. We’ll see who will be stronger.”

The test of wills exploded into the worst violence since the troubles began in December. Though additional security forces were poured in, thousands of West Bank Palestinians commemorated Land Day by burning tires and attacking soldiers. By week’s end, as Christians and Jews began their Easter and Passover observances, 18 more Palestinians had been shot dead by Israeli troops, which raised the toll to 139 in the four-month uprising.

As some waved the banned Palestine Liberation Organization flag, thousands of Israeli Arabs staged nonviolent Land Day demonstrations in sympathy with the Palestinians under occupation. The restrictions were lifted on Good Friday, but Israeli leaders did not withdraw their threats to quell the rioters. Declared Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir: “We say to them, from this hilltop and from the perspective of thousands of years of history, that in our eyes they are like grasshoppers.”

As Shamir spoke, Secretary of State George Shultz was heading to the Middle East, his third such trip in five weeks to try to sell his peace plan. Shamir, who remains adamantly opposed to Shultz’s proposals, had fresh reason to be concerned last week. Five days before the Secretary of State left Washington, he met for 90 minutes with two Palestinian-Americans. Both are members of the Palestine National Council, a parliament-in-exile with some 400 members that serves as an umbrella organization for the P.L.O. as well as for nonmilitary Palestinian institutions.

The two men, Professors Edward Said of Columbia University and Ibrahim Abu- Lughod of Northwestern University, are not official representatives of the P.L.O. Even so, Shamir charged that Shultz had violated a 1975 memorandum of understanding that bars U.S. diplomats from recognizing or negotiating with the P.L.O. until the group acknowledges Israel’s right to exist. Said Benjamin Netanyahu, who resigned his post as Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations last week in order to speak out against the encounter as well as run for the Knesset: “The meeting marks a serious erosion in the U.S. commitment not to negotiate with the P.L.O.”

The session was lauded by Arab countries and Palestinians. “A direct dialogue between the U.S. and the Palestinians is necessary to give a push to the peace effort,” said Egyptian Foreign Minister Esmat Abdul-Meguid. P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat declared that the Secretary of State “now knows . . . that he is unable to go ahead with his plan without the representatives of the Palestinian people.” Shultz denied that there had been any change in U.S. policy, and pointed out that it was “beyond the pale” for Shamir to suggest that a U.S. official could not meet with American citizens.

Shultz resumed his shuttle to Israel and neighboring Arab countries to show that the U.S. remains determined to pursue a “territory for peace” solution to the Palestinian problem. He wants to ensure that key Arab leaders, notably Jordan’s King Hussein, do not shy away from their basic sympathy for his diplomatic efforts. Said a senior aide: “You know George. He’s going to bulldog ahead.”

But Shultz also intends to attempt a fresh approach with Shamir. The Prime Minister has flatly rejected the first part of Shultz’s plan, which calls for an international conference. Tired of haggling over procedure, Shultz intends to focus on phase two of his plan: granting interim self-rule, or autonomy, to the Palestinians living under military rule.

Shultz hopes to build on 1979 talks conducted between the U.S., Israel and Egypt over what might constitute autonomy in the occupied territories. The negotiators agreed at that time to turn over to the Palestinians 20 civil functions, including tax collection, health and education. The agreements were never implemented. But in a letter to Shultz three months ago, Shamir agreed to discuss five autonomy issues that went unresolved in 1979: Jewish settlements, the rights to water resources, security, the rights of Palestinians living in annexed East Jerusalem and the question of whether the autonomous entity would have legislative powers.

Palestinians fear that Israel may grant limited civil autonomy but then refuse to abandon its military occupation. Thus a key challenge for Shultz will be to get Shamir’s commitment to the last phase of his proposal: negotiations aimed at reaching an agreement by which Israel would return the occupied lands in exchange for a promise of peace.

So far, Shultz has no plans to amend his proposal that the Palestinians enter negotiations only as part of a joint delegation with Jordan. But Shultz’s advisers acknowledge privately that the U.S., having concluded that there can be no peace settlement without the P.L.O.’s approval, “intends in practice to be intensely ambiguous on the issue of P.L.O. contacts.”

The P.L.O., most experts and opinion polls indicate, enjoys the overwhelming support of the world’s 5 million Palestinians, including the 1.4 million who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But since the organization emerged as a guerrilla force in the 1960s, Israel has refused to negotiate with the P.L.O. out of concern that its members were determined to destroy the Jewish state. So intense is the Israeli revulsion that in 1975, then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin extracted the promise from U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that Washington would not negotiate with the P.L.O. Though the agreement did not seem to ban contacts with the group, Jimmy Carter’s Ambassador to the U.N., Andrew Young, was forced to resign in 1979 after holding an unauthorized meeting with a P.L.O. observer at the U.N.

Many foreign policy experts agree that the prohibition against negotiations now hinders U.S. diplomacy. “I see no reason not to talk to the P.L.O.,” says Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was Carter’s National Security Adviser. “The French talked to the Algerians, the U.S. talked to the North Vietnamese, and at this moment the contras are talking to the Sandinistas. Israeli insistence on not talking with the P.L.O. is in effect a dodge to prevent any negotiations at all.” Though his is still a minority Israeli view, Yehoshafat Harkabi, a former military-intelligence chief, believes that the current unrest may eventually force Israel to change its stance.

Those who insist that the U.S. should continue to honor its 1975 pledge point out that the P.L.O. has never acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. Although the Palestinian National Charter of 1968 says “armed struggle” is the only way to regain “indivisible” Palestine, Arafat has expressed more moderate views over the years. He has spoken in interviews of his readiness to recognize Israel if Israelis reciprocally grant Palestinians their demands for an independent state. Says Columbia University’s Said: “Arafat’s position in the Palestinian community is that of a man who wants a political settlement based on two states ((for Israelis and Arabs)). Every Palestinian knows that.”

But few if any Israelis, or, for that matter, Americans, know that — if it is indeed true. Enormous doubts remain about both Arafat’s trustworthiness and his ability to control the more radical elements of his organization. Shultz’s challenge, for the moment at least, will be to continue to open the door to Palestinian participation in the peace talks and not let Shamir shut it completely. “Everyone agrees that Palestinians have to be a part of this process,” Shultz told reporters aboard his plane last week. “The question is how to structure that, and how to identify the right people.”

To many analysts, Shultz’s meeting with the two pro-Arafat professors appeared to reflect a subtle shift in U.S. policy. Though Washington is still not prepared to break the Kissinger agreement unilaterally, Shultz seems more convinced than ever that without P.L.O. consultation of some sort, the first act of his peace plan — an international conference — will never take place. The challenge of his task was aptly illustrated last week when Arafat apparently gave the green light for more Palestinians to meet with Shultz in the Middle East this week. But then came still another leaflet circulated by the underground leaders of the uprising. The order: protest Shultz’s visit.