President Bush has signed into law an emergency aid bill authorizing $650 million in additional military aid for Israel, the White House announced Thursday.
But before Israel receives any of the money, Bush must sign a $4 billion Operation Desert Storm supplemental appropriations bill, which actually releases the funds authorized. Congress approved the appropriations bill in final form March 22, and Bush has another week to sign it, which he is expected to do.
The money will help cover Israel’s added defense-preparedness spending between Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait last August and the allied forces’ victory last month.
With the aid issue resolved, pro-Israel activists here are turning their attention to talk of a hypothetical Middle East peace conference that would be jointly sponsored by the United States and the Soviet Union and would lead to direct negotiations between Israel and the Arabs.
State Department officials have been meeting this week with diplomats from Israel, Egypt and Jordan, as well as with West Bank Palestinian activist Hanan Ashrawi.
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the meetings did not deal with any “plan on the table” but rather with “just proposals and ideas.”
He said the idea of a superpower-sponsored conference is nothing new in that it was raised in October 1987 by George Shultz, who was secretary of state at the time.
Israel considers such a conference preferable to one sponsored by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which would involve China, France and Great Britain.
Sources in the pro-Israel community say the State Department would insist, on Israel’s behalf, that the Soviet Union restore full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state as a precondition for such a conference.
There is concern among Israeli diplomats that with the recent resignation of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, the Soviets may be “going off track” and return to what the United States and Israel have considered to be the Soviets’ traditional siding with the Arab cause against Israel, said one observer.
REPORTS OF PLO OFFER
Israel’s concession would be its actual participation in such a conference. Israel has long rejected the international conference scenario, for fear that the other nations would “gang up” and put undue pressure on the Jewish state to make concessions against its interests.
But the Bush administration is now said to believe that the prospect of actual negotiations with the Arab states, breaking a longtime taboo, would be too strong an incentive to forgo.
Another reason why Israel has rejected such a conference in the past has been the traditional demand by Arab countries that the Palestine Liberation Organization be involved.
But in one of the more significant shifts resulting from the Persian Gulf conflict, Arab states are said to be not particularly anxious to rehabilitate the PLO.
Another concession Israel would reportedly have to make would be to reaffirm its adherence to U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which calls on Israel to give up land in exchange for recognition from the Arab states.
Israel’s governing Likud bloc has taken the position that 242’s demands for land transfer were satisfied by the return of Sinai to Egypt. According to pro-Israel sources, the Likud government is being asked to back off from that interpretation before any conference is convened.
Another potential problem for Israel is with the contacts any prospective Palestinian interlocutors would profess to the PLO.
One observer pointed out that when a group of Palestinians met with Secretary of State James Baker recently in Jerusalem, they opened the meeting by declaring, “We are the PLO.”
The observer said a major problem would arise during any peace conference if the Palestinians declared they were receiving instructions from the PLO.
The administration has not been anxious to bring the PLO back into the peace process. But there were reports Thursday that the PLO is prepared to make new concessions to get Washington to resume its dialogue with the organization.
The U.S.-PLO dialogue was suspended last June after the PLO refused to expel one of its executive committee members, Mohammed (Abul) Abbas, whose faction carried out an aborted terrorist attack on Israeli beaches the month before.
The reports Thursday said the PLO is now offering to expel Abbas in return for a resumed dialogue.
But Baker said recently that because of the PLO’s support for Iraq during the Gulf crisis, expulsion of Abbas would not be enough.
ALL EYES ON CAIRO SUMMIT
For the superpower-sponsored conference to take place, the Arab states would have to agree to hold direct talks with Israel. In addition, the Arabs reportedly would have to allow the focus of such discussions to be on “interim arrangements,” allowing Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and not “final-status issues,” such as land for peace.
Pro-Israel activists indicated they would be closely watching this weekend’s Arab League conference in Cairo for signs of an evolving Arab position on talks with Israel.
The site of Cairo for the conference is significant, because the Arab League has not met there since 1978, when Egypt began peace talks with Israel.
While the meeting will be held there with “the Israeli flag still flying in Cairo,” Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents said he did not expect the summit to produce any new moderate language on Israel.
He said the Arab countries should issue a declaration that they are prepared to “end the state of belligerency” and not just their technical state of war with Israel.
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