Israel is nearing its moment of truth as prospects improve for the Middle East peace conference the United States wants to convene by the end of October.
The most significant in the latest series of rapidly converging events was the Palestine National Council’s vote in Algiers on Friday authorizing Palestinian participation in the conference.
It was a triumph for Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat against radicals urging armed struggle instead of diplomacy.
Bush administration officials in Washington said they were extremely pleased by the PLO’s apparent endorsement of the peace conference. They admitted that the most difficult task lies ahead: reconciling the PLO’s desire to get increasingly involved in the conference with Israel’s absolute rejection of any PLO role in the process.
The PNC is an adjunct of the PLO and its actions therefore are routinely dismissed by Israel as “irrelevant.” But Israeli officials admitted privately over the weekend that Arafat’s success removed the last hurdle in the way of the conference on the Arab side.
The PNC further pleased the Americans by dropping from its top policy-making panel Mohammed (Abul) Abbas, head of the Baghdad-based Palestine Liberation Front, whom Washington accuses of being a terrorist leader.
Abbas was behind a failed commando raid on Israeli beaches in May 1990. Because the PLO refused to repudiate the raid or dismiss Abbas, Washington broke off its dialogue with the PLO which, to date, has not been resumed.
NO-CONFIDENCE VOTE SET OCT. 7
Israel’s conditional commitment to participate in the proposed peace confernce is still stronger than the ambiguous Palestinian position. But Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is under increasing pressure from the right wing of his governing coalition to withdraw it.
His government faces a no-confidence vote when the Knesset opens its winter session Oct. 7. If the three far-right factions cast their combined seven votes with the opposition bloc, Shamir will have lost his parliamentary majority and the government will almost certainly resign.
In all likelihood, that would mean dissolution of the 12th Knesset over a year before its statutory term expires and new elections in about four or five months.
Shamir presumably would head the caretaker government in the interim. In theory, he could send Israel to the peace table.
In practice, though, he cannot do so without a fresh mandate from the electorate. As Israel struggled through a grueling election campaign, the entire peace process would languish.
That scenario loomed as U.S. Secretary of State James Baker was expected back in the region shortly for what would be his eighth visit to the Middle East since the Persian Gulf War ended in March.
The purpose of his trip this time would be to deliver invitations to the conference to each of the participating parties.
The imminence of that development injected sudden drama into Israel’s domestic political arena. Shamir met Sunday with the leaders of Tehiya and Moledet, the two far-right coalition partners that have threatened to revolt in next Monday’s Knesset showdown.
Shamir apparently did not succeed in mollifying them. Geula Cohen of Tehiya accused him of “running into a disastrous conference, instead of running for election.”
TSOMET NOW AGAINST PEACE CONFERENCE
Shamir took another blow from the right when Agriculture Minister Rafael Eitan, leader of the Tsomet faction, announced over the weekend that he was reversing his previous support of the peace conference, because the United States is “not acting like an honest broker” but siding with the Arabs.
He did not say how he would vote Oct. 7.
Cohen accused Shamir of trying to “frighten” his rightist allies by suggesting that if they defected, the four Orthodox parties would also leave the coalition to form a new government with the Labor bloc. The religious parties denied they were considering any such option.
While the Labor Party and its allies plan to introduce no-confidence motions, opinion is divided over the prospects of early elections. Some Laborites demand that the party back Shamir against his hard-line partners, while legislation reforming the electoral system makes its slow way through the Knesset.
Elsewhere on the diplomatic front, Washington indicated it was determined not to let a dispute with Israel over the roles of Palestinian activists Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi impede progress toward the peace conference.
The United States reportedly sent a discreet warning to Jerusalem not to take vigorous legal action against the two, who allegedly flew from London last week to the PNC meeting in Algiers, in defiance of Israeli law.
Israel forbids Palestinians as well as its own citizens from any contact with the PLO. The right has demanded the arrest of the two Palestinian leaders as soon as they return to Israel.
But opposition politicians and even some Likud figures are urging the government not to initiate criminal proceedings against them, especially since their intervention in Algiers was widely reported to have tilted the balance in favor of peace talks.
NO ROLE FOR HUSSEINI OR ASHRAWI
One prominent Likud member who took that view is Shlomo Lahat, the popular mayor of Tel Aviv. But he is often dismissed by his party as a maverick for his support of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, which is seen as a heresy against the Likud party line.
Husseini and Ashrawi deny having gone to Algiers. But it is a feeble denial inasmuch as the news media placed them at the PNC session and even credited them with swaying the delegates in favor of the moderates in Arafat’s camp who support a peace conference.
Israel, for its part, is understood to have warned the United States that if Baker meets with the pair in Washington at this time, it would be regarded in Jerusalem as an intolerable affront that could “gravely damage” the conference prospects.
Shamir on Friday ruled out any role for Husseini or Ashrawi at the peace conference Husseini because he lives in East Jerusalem and Ashrawi because she identifies with the PLO.
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