Nation: Connally’s Way

Big John’s Middle East plan

Nothing timid about John Connally. The Republican presidential aspirant readily concedes that negotiations for peace in the Middle East are “sensitive and delicate.” But in a foreign policy address to the Washington Press Club, the Texan galloped headlong onto that fragile ground last week with a nine-point peace plan of his own. Its basic principles: Israel must stop its “creeping annexation of the West Bank” and abandon all territory it seized in 1967; her Arab neighbors, in turn, must renounce force and terrorism and pledge “stable oil prices” to the Western world. If those conditions are met, the U.S. then would, in effect, police the peace by sending military forces to the Middle East.

Connally offered no apologies for linking peace terms with oil. “The oil of the Middle East is and will continue to be the lifeblood of Western civilization for decades to come,” he said. His basic equation: “The Arabs must forsake the oil weapon in return for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories.”

Connally bluntly criticized the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. “A clear distinction must be drawn by the U.S. between support for Israel’s security — which is a moral imperative — and support for Israel’s broader territorial acquisitions,” he insisted. “Except for minor border rectifications, Israel must withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza and Golan,” including all civilian settlements in those areas. Only those Palestinian leaders who accept U.N. Resolution 242 and “renounce all terrorist tactics” would then be permitted to join peace talks. Connally added that the Palestinians then should choose whether to “be governed as an entirely independent entity or to be an autonomous area within the Kingdom of Jordan.”

As for the U.S. post-settlement role, he suggested that the U.S. might lease former Israeli airfields in the Sinai and create a new Fifth Fleet that would patrol the Indian Ocean. It could also seek approval to establish a naval base in Oman to “provide security for the Arabian Sea and the strategic Strait of Hormuz.”

Connally’s staff explained that the speech was “a bold plan to establish stability in the Middle East.” The Texan’s plunge into such perilous diplomatic waters will not necessarily cost him votes or dollars. For one thing, the Jewish vote in Republican primaries is negligible. For another, Connally’s money situation is excellent and is pinned more to corporate boardrooms than to funds from independent Jewish businessmen. Looking ahead to a race against Ted Kennedy, it would be correct to figure that Kennedy would get much of the Jewish vote. Thus the Connally speech might have been reaching past that bloc to play to a broader national concern about oil supplies.