Secretary of State George Shultz last night outlined what he termed “the common agenda of Israel and the United States” in their effort to achieve a secure peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
In his address to Jewish communal leaders at the 52nd General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations, which was interrupted by frequent applause, Shultz described the effort to achieve a secure peace as “a central core to our diplomacy.”
The common agenda of Israel and the United States that will be discussed in Washington this week and next, when President Reagan meets with President Chaim Herzog, Premier Yitzhak Shamir and Defense Minister Moshe Arens, will include the fate of Lebanon, Israel’s relationship with Egypt, the possibilities for peace in the Middle East and the fate of the threatened Jewish communities around the world, especially the Soviet Union, Shultz said.
The Secretary of State referred a number of times to the close ties between the United States and Israel and pointed to Israel as “a powerful force for freedom and a strategic partner to America and the West.” This is why “we have ensured — and continue to ensure — that Israel receives the help it needs to maintain a military advantage to deter its enemies,” Shultz declared. “The Soviet military buildup in Syria underlines this necessity again and again and again.” He added, “by helping Israel, we are also helping ourselves.”
REGRETS ISRAEL’S REJECTION OF REAGAN PLAN
Nevertheless, Shultz faulted Israel on a number of issues. He noted that since the achievement of the Camp David accords, “the peace process has en-countered many problems. On the Israeli side, we remain deeply concerned about the ongoing construction and expansion of settlements unilaterally changing the status of the occupied territories even while their future is subject to negotiations.”
He cautioned that the moral burden of the occupation can undermine the values on which Israel was founded and can divide its society.”
At the same time, Shultz also made it clear that the struggle on the Arab side between those who want to secure a better future through negotiations and “those who reject peaceful solutions or simple recognition (of Israel) as a matter of ideology” are also hampering the peace process.
Shultz also expressed regret that Israel rejected Reagan’s September, 1982 Mideast peace initiative. “The positions laid out in the President’s initiative are fair, Balanced and realistic,” he said. “They were meant as a stimulus to negotiation, not as the dictated outcome of a negotiation.”
Although the initiative “triggered a vigorous, and, on the whole, constructive debate among the Arab leaders, none of them has yet seized that opportunity,” Shultz noted. “Likewise, it was a challenge to Israel to achieve true and lasting security through peace, rather than relying on the short-term illusion of security through territory. The Israeli government, I regret to note, rejected the President’s initiative.”
Another dimension of peace in the Middle East, Shultz said, involves the fate of the Palestinian people, “in particular … the 1.3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Their well-being, their desire for a greater voice in determining their own destiny” is another issue of concern “even while we continue to pursue an agreed solution to the final status of the occupied territories.”
Continuing, Shultz declared, “if their acceptance of a peaceful future with Israel is to be nurtured, they must be given some stake in that future by greater opportunities for economic development, by fairer administration practices and by greater concern for the quality of their lives.”
Dealing with Jordan, Shultz said that King Hussein “has long sought a path toward moderation and conciliation” but that Jordan’s participation in the peace process “has been inhibited by many considerations, including the absence of the necessary support from other moderate Arabs but most of all, the fierce opposition by Arab radicals.”
Regarding the PLO, Shultz affirmed that it “has thus far excluded itself as a negotiating partner by its refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
Discussing the agony of Lebanon, the Secretary of State said that the yearning for peace runs deep in that country. “But the delicate balance in Lebanon was upset, primarily by the involvement by outside, non-Lebanese forces — just as today, the primary obstacle to internal reconciliation is the presence of outside, non-Lebanese forces.”
Shultz said that the Palestinian terrorists, expelled from Jordan in 1970, came to Lebanon and turned south Lebanon “into an armed camp, which became a state within a state, terrorizing the local population; ultimately it became a battleground.”
Israel, he said, moved into Lebanon “with an announced intention to eradicate the threat once and for all. When the guns fell silent, the terrorists had been driven from Beirut and south Lebanon. Although we had not agreed with Israel’s decision to invade Lebanon, we accepted the request of Lebanon and Israel to help them negotiate a longer-term solution to the basic problem.”
UPHOLDS ISRAEL-LEBANON ACCORD
The May 17 Lebanon-Israel accord which followed has not yet been implemented, “largely because of Syria’s refusal to negotiate the withdrawal of its own forces from Lebanon, reneging the repeated pledges to do so once Israel did so,” Shultz said. He described the accord as “the only existing formula that ensures both Israeli withdrawal and a solution to the security problem that created the Lebanese crisis in the first place. We will not accept its abrogation.”
Departing from his prepared text, Shultz wondered aloud what “is so unreasonable” about an agreement that provides security arrangements and commercial relations between two countries.
He said that “no one questions that Syria has legitimate security concerns with respect to Lebanon. But Syria, unlike Israel, has so far been unwilling to negotiate with Lebanon over how to reconcile those concerns with Lebanon’s sovereign right to decide its own destiny.”
America’s support for Lebanon, Shultz added, “cannot be separated from our broader peace objectives in the Middle East.” He said it would be a “serious mistake” to remove the multi-national force at this time, because its removal “would only upset the balance in Lebanon, undermine the chances for a political settlement, and precipitate new chaos.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
