Edward R.F. Sheehan, an expert on the Mideast who recently published a controversial article on Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s Mideast policy in “Foreign Policy” magazine, said last night that there is a consensus in Washington on a plan to settle the Arab-Israeli dispute, but this plan will be implemented only after the Presidential elections in the United States.
Addressing a meeting of the Overseas Press Club at the Biltmore Hotel, Sheehan, a Harvard Fellow and former Foreign Service officer posted to the U.S. Embassies in Cairo and Beirut in 1957 and 1961, said that according to this plan, Israel will have to retreat to its pre-June 1967 borders, a Palestinian state will be established in the West Bank and Israel’s security and well-being will be guaranteed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union and possibly other powers.
According to Sheehan, no President will be able to ignore “this consensus” which is also shared, he said, by the international community. “The plan is an imperative that will confront the next President of the United States,” he stated.
Noting that the prospects for peace in the Mideast are not “too bright.” Sheehan predicted American pressure on Israel after the election to convince Israel to retreat from all Arab territories taken in the Six-Day War and to accept the American plan. He also pointed to recent hints by American officials that a more positive attitude toward the PLO may be forthcoming and contended that the U.S. will eventually negotiate with the PLO.
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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.
