Atmosphere Clouded As Talks Begin

“Tough talks”–this was the common expectation here as Secretary of State Cyrus Vance arrived for two days of negotiations with Premier Menachem Begin and his team. The atmosphere was clouded by what has widely been interpreted, both in the U.S. and here, as a shift in the direction of American peace-making manifested over the last day or two, with Washington now no longer seeking ways of keeping the Palestine Liberation Organization out of Geneva, but ways of bringing it in.

The statements by President Carter in Plains, Ga that the PLO had hinted it might accept UN Security Council Resolution 242, and by the State Department spokesman in Saudi Arabia, that such acceptance would be tantamount to a renunciation of the “Palestine Covenant,” were seen as parts of on orchestrated and deliberately timed U.S. effort to nudge Israel and the PLO closer together–and closer to Geneva.

It was on effort which, in the view of observers here, was bound to set Jerusalem and Washington on collision course. The collision, moreover, might well occur, it seemed, at the talks this week with Vance. For Israel–the present government as the previous one–is firmly determined not to negotiate with the PLO even if the organization does announce a reserved acceptance of Resolution 242, as Carter is hoping.

ATTITUDE TOWARD PLO SET

In the past, Israeli leaders tended to avoid having to spell this out. They would dodge “what-would-happen-if” questions, saying they were “hypothetical.” One of former Premier Yitzhak Rabin’s favorite aphorisms in this connection was: “If my grandmother had wheels she would be a bus.”

But it was always clear that Israel would not be prepared to sit at the negotiating table with Yasir Arafat and his henchmen, even if they first paid lip service to the Resolution 242. This was the implicit meaning of the previous Cabinet’s specific rejection of the “Yariv-Shemtov Formula,” the formula devised by the doveish former ministers, Aharon Yariv and Victor Shemtov, proposing that Israel announce it would negotiate with any Palestinian group that recognized it, accepted 242 and desisted from terror.

The rejection of that formula is still the official government position. Premier Menachem Begin himself declared yesterday that PLO participation at Geneva was “out of the question… completely unacceptable.”

WASHINGTON INTENT ON PRESSING ISRAEL

This is not, however, and never has been, the U.S. position. Washington has consistently conditioned its acceptance of the PLO as a negotiating partner on the PLO’s acceptance of 242 and recognition of Israel. This American stance was enshrined in the “Memorandum of Agreement” concluded between Jerusalem and Washington at the time of the second Sinai agreement in September, 1975.

Plainly, Washington is now intent on pressing Israel to shift its own position on the PLO and fall in behind the American line. Vance is expected to apply persuasive pressure in this direction during the talks here whether or not the PLO actually comes through with its own acceptance of 242 as Carter hopes.

If the Secretary could elicit such a shift from Israel, that in itself would be used by the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Egypt as additional ammunition with which to bombard the PLO into shifting its position, too, and recognizing 242.

But such a shift is unlikely, to say the least, and thus the specter of a clash with Washington grows larger while the hope of an early reconvening of the Geneva conference recedes. In this situation some observers here have raised the prospect–at present more as a speculation than a firmly-grounded assessment–that Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan will broach with Vance the possibility of resuming the process of interim agreements.

The Begin government is known to be moderate–perhaps more moderate than its predecessor–on the Sinai and the Golan Heights, and Dayan himself is believed to favor new interim pacts with both Egypt and Syria. Sources around Dayan do not discourage such speculation. Dayan, after all, is depicted by them as the pragmatist, the man with the original mind, the man chosen by Begin specifically for the purpose of steering Israel away from seemingly hopeless deadlock, while at the same time not conceding its control over the West Bank.