By not showing up on time in Washington for the first round of bilateral peace talks with the Arabs, Israel appeared to be demonstrating this week that it cannot be pushed around by the U.S. government.
Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his Cabinet apparently decided to stomach a short-term propaganda disaster for what they hope and expect to be long-range benefits for Israel as the peace process unfolds.
“These are going to be five terrible days,” a senior official remarked this week, referring to the interval between Wednesday, when the Arab delegations showed up in Washington, and next Monday, when the three Israeli teams say they will be ready to begin negotiations.
But once the five days have passed, Shamir believes the “bottom line” will show a net gain for Israel, a source close to the prime minister explained.
Shamir feels he will have succeeded in demonstrating to the Bush administration, Congress, the U.S. public and the folks at home that Washington cannot force Israel to make decisions it believes are against its own interests.
He believes it is better to stand firm now, in the preliminary stages of the peace process, than further along, when the talks have entered the substantive stages, on which Israel and its Arab neighbors are deeply divided.
It is better, the source said, that President Bush and Secretary of State James Baker discover now how doggedly determined Israel’s 76-year-old prime minister can be, even over matters of ostensibly minor importance, such as the whens, wheres and hows of negotiations, rather than the whats and whys.
The source added that Shamir took pains to emphasize he was not acting out of personal pique over the cavalier treatment he received at the hands of the Bush administration during his visit to Washington last month.
His own honor was not at stake. What was at stake was the image of his government in the eyes of U.S. policy-makers. He would not allow his delegates to be “summoned” to Washington on a particular day, while Israel was still arguing for a conference venue closer to the Middle East, at a time more convenient to it.
While Shamir is taking a calculated risk, the prime minister also believes that the more lasting public relations image will not be the empty chairs on Dec.4 but the arrival of the Israeli negotiators five days later, and the fact that the Arabs and Americans waited for them to come.
WILL PALESTINIANS WAIT?
But such a scenario could easily go awry if the Arabs do not wait around until Monday and accuse Israel of sabotaging the peace talks.
Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi hinted Wednesday that her delegation might not appear Monday because it is the fourth anniversary of the intifada in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
If the Palestinians or other Arab parties stay away, Shamir is prepared. He has positioned in New York one of his most militant and effective propagandists, Benjamin Netanyahu, who attended the Madrid peace conference as deputy foreign minister and is now a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office.
Netanyahu, who challenged the Arabs on Wednesday to “move away from the cameras and futile point-scoring” to talk peace with Israel, is prepared to hurl the Arab charges back at them if they refuse to wait for the Israeli negotiators to show up Monday.
Another problem could arise Monday if the joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation insists on splitting into two groups, in an assertion of Palestinian independence.
Israel has insisted on regarding the delegation as a unified body. But sources say Israel has now agreed in principle that the issues on the agenda will require separate working groups.
“This is not a cardinal problem,” a senior government source said Wednesday.
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