U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz’s planned visit to the Middle East later this week has triggered a new surge of political posturing here and throughout the region, as leaders in Israel try to overcome what appears to be growing disunity between the two ruling parties.
Shultz is expected to try to sell the latest American peace plan to the Israeli leadership– and to Palestinian representatives, if he can find any willing to meet with him.
The Cabinet was briefed by Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the latest flare-up of violence in the West Bank, during which five Palestinians were killed Saturday and Sunday. But it did not discuss the broader peace issue.
Premier Yitzhak Shamir, apparently under pressure from Labor ministers, agreed that the Inner Cabinet will convene in special session Wednesday, a day before Shultz’s arrival, to try to hammer out a unified policy.
The Inner Cabinet is the government’s top policy-making body, consisting of five Labor and five Likud senior ministers. Shamir explained that the smaller body was less prone to leaks than the full Cabinet.
But the Inner Cabinet has a poor record to date with respect to the peace process. Each session on the subject during the past year has ended in deadlock between Shamir’s Likud bloc and the Labor Party, headed by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
At the moment, Labor is prepared to consider the American plan, which reportedly calls for acceleration of “interim arrangements” — meaning some kind of autonomy for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — and an international “opening” or “event” before the end of the year to launch negotiations over the permanent status of the territories.
Likud adamantly opposes any form of international conclave, insists on adhering to the five-year transition timetable set forth in the 1978 Camp David accords, demands bilateral negotiations with Jordan or any other negotiating partner and rules out an exchange of territory for peace.
If the coalition partners fail to reach a united stand on the eve of Shultz’s arrival, the secretary of state may find himself confronted by what observers inside and out of the Cabinet have called “two Israeli governments” instead of one.
DOUBTS ABOUT JORDAN
Rabin, meanwhile, expressed strong doubts Sunday that Jordan will agree to enter negotiations with Israel on the basis of the American initiative.
He told a Labor Party forum that he was dubious of King Hussein’s intentions, noting that Jordan has always opposed peace talks based on autonomy and rejects the Camp David accords, an agreement between Israel and Egypt from which Jordan stood aloof.
Rabin also noted that Hussein fears a confrontation with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which has the potential to stir trouble within the Hashemite Kingdom. Nevertheless, Rabin joined other Labor ministers in support of the American initiative.
The waters may have been further muddied by almost friendly signals from President Hafez Assad of Syria, until now a hard-line rejectionist of any negotiations with Israel.
According to media reports Sunday, Assad recently conveyed a message to Israel that he was ready for a peace settlement in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and formally annexed six years ago.
The intermediary was described as a Jewish businessman living in Switzerland who sent Assad’s message to Israel after meeting with a senior Syrian figure associated with Assad.
According to the reported message, Syria is willing to accept security arrangements that would remove any threat to Israel should it withdraw from the Golan Heights, the highlands overlooking most of upper Galilee.
SYRIAN FLEXIBILITY REPORTED
The message also contains hints of Syrian willingness to be flexible on the Palestinian issue and is critical of the leadership of Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat.
Syria has sent similar signals before, expressing willingness to examine a political settlement with Israel within the overall framework of the Golan Heights issue. The latest message followed a visit to Damascus two weeks go by Richard Murphy, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs.
Murphy, the Reagan administration’s Middle East troubleshooter, came to Jerusalem after stopovers in Damascus and Cairo. If he brought any proposals from Assad, they have remained a tight secret.
In Geneva, meanwhile, Arafat said Friday the PLO was ready to accept United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which call for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territories and its right to exist within secure, recognized boundaries. He made the remarks in an address to the annual conference of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Arafat vowed in Geneva that the PLO would “continue to resist the occupation with waves and waves of unrest until we get our goal.”
The PLO also is apparently trying to prevent a meeting between Shultz and Palestinian leaders from the territories. It denied, from its headquarters in Tunis, Eriday, that it had given the green light for such a meeting, as reported by the Arabic financial weekly A-Sinara which circulates in Nablus.
According to that report, Arafat himself named six Palestinians to meet with Shultz. The newspaper identified them as Hanna Siniora, editor of the East Jerusalem Arabic daily Al-Fajr; Fayez Abu Rahme, a Gaza Strip lawyer; journalist Jihad Abu Jihad; former Mayor Mustafa Natsha of Hebron; businessman Said Kanaan; and Az-A-Din Arian, West Bank director of the Red Crescent, the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross. Arian is presently under administrative detention.
Abu Rahme, who recently accompanied Siniora to Washington, where both met with Shultz, was quoted Sunday by the Jerusalem Post as saying there was no Palestinian consensus at present for a meeting with the secretary of state, but he thought there could be “developments” that would make a meeting possible.
West Bank personalities were reported Sunday to be urging Arafat to withdraw his objections to Palestinians meeting with Shultz.
MOSCOW AGAINST PEACE PLAN
Meanwhile, a ranking Soviet diplomat told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Geneva on Sunday that Moscow does not accept the peace plan proposed by Shultz and considers it most urgent to convene an international peace conference immediately.
Vladimir Petrovsky, the Soviet vice minister for foreign affairs, said an international conference would serve as a framework for multilateral negotiations and, if necessary, bilateral talks.
But he would not agree, under questioning by the JTA, that the conference should have no power to enforce a solution, one of the conditions put down by Shultz and by Israeli leaders, such as Foreign Minister Peres, who favor an international conference.
The Soviet diplomat, in Geneva for disarmament talks, said his delegation is pressing for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the foreign ministerial level to find a political settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
(Geneva correspondent Tamar Levy contributed to this report.)
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