Special Analysis Icy Fingers on Israel’s Spine

The United States made it clear this week that Israel has got to find a way of accommodating itself to having the Palestine Liberation Organization participate in reconvened Geneva talks or find itself faced with a fait accompli: U.S. recognition of the PLO as a legitimate and full member in those talks and there by the legal representative of the Palestinian people.

This, in distilled essence, is what emerged during the last laps of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s 10-day sprint through the Middle East when State Department officials in his entourage in Taif, the summer capital of Saudi Arabia, and President Carter, at a press conference outside his peanut warehouse in Plains, Ga., stereophonically disclosed to the world that the PLO might be ready to accept United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 and, with that, Israel’s right to exist.

But the real drama was not that the PLO might accept 242 but the timing of the announcement and the concomitant revelation by Carter that the U.S. has contact with the PLO, not direct contact, “but of course they are sending us messages through the Syrians, the Saudi Arabians, the Egyptians and the Jordanians. We have a means,” Carter continued, “to contact them and to exchange ideas with them.”

BIG BOOST FOR THE U. S.

These disclosures, coming at the specific point in time and at the specific conjuncture of events was a coup of first magnitude for the U. S. It provided, as some U.S. international strategists saw it, for an array of new international diplomatic combinations and possibilities. For one thing, by promoting the PLO as a possible partner in the Geneva talks if they were to accept Resolution 242, the frost between the U.S. and the Soviet Union could be thawed just in time for the meeting between Vance and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko next month in New York. The Soviet Union, which was co-chairman with the U. S. of the first Geneva conference in 1973, has long been boosting the PLO as a partner in any reconvened Geneva talks.

For another thing, it could reinforce U.S. ties with Egypt and draw Syria closer into the U.S. orbit. Still further, it could show that the U.S. is a friend of the Palestinian people with a genuine concern for their future and prove at the same time that American concern for human rights is not limited to rapping the Soviet Union on this issue.

Moreover, it could secure for the U.S. a more entrenched economic position among the Arab states where the arms sale competition and technological know-how of Britain and France, let alone the Soviet Union, is becoming an increasing problem for the U.S. in addition, it could stand the U.S. in good stead with the nine member states of the European Economic Community which recently adopted a pro-Palestinian resolution.

QUESTION OF ‘ADDITIONAL STATUS’

The announcements made in Taif and Plains did not indicate the basis for assuming that the PLO was ready to change its view of Resolution 242 and neither Carter nor Vance indicated that the PLO would have to repudiate the “Palestine National Covenant” for it to become acceptable to the U.S. as a participant in the Geneva talks. All the “Palestinians” would have to do, Carter noted, would be to say “we recognize UN Resolution 242 in its entirety, but we think the Palestinians have additional status other than refugees.” That, Carter affirmed, “would suit us fine.”

The President, however, and the Secretary, refrained from spelling out what that “additional status” would be that “would suit us fine.” Recognizing 242 “in its entirely” excludes “additional status” because 242 refers only to “achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem.” To provide any “additional status” would require amending 242. It seems unlikely that Carter or Vance believed for a moment that the PLO would be satisfied with merely verbalizing its “additional status” without including it as a clause in 242 and thereby modifying the resolution.

As it to underscore the almost obsessional need for the U.S. to diplomatically cohabit with the PLO, Vance urged Israel during his talks with Premier Menachem Begin “to strike down paths that are unfamiliar” in order to reach peace. While granting the uncertainty and danger in the peace process, Vance clamped the vise a notch tighter and said that the U.S., acting as the catalyst, might proceed “with more activism than Israel would prefer.”

The activism, as some saw it in Jerusalem and Washington, was both a promise and a threat that unless Israel shapes up regarding what Vance termed “one of the unresolved problems”–Palestinian participation in the Geneva talks–the U.S. would proceed to have “direct” contacts with the PLO, in effect, conferring recognition and legitimizing the terrorist gang.

MAKING ISRAEL THE HEAVY

Deliberately, almost cynically, the U.S. succeeded in shifting the spotlight of a possible failure for the Geneva talks to resume or, having resumed, break up without any conclusions, on Israel. Thus the U.S. turned Israel into the heavy in the Mideast peace process scenario. Carter and State Department officials in Vance’s entourage waited until the Secretary had finished his talks in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and was on his way to Israel to toss a disclosure of a possible new PLO stance on Resolution 242 into the diplomatic ballpark.

The timing was suspect, if Carter is to be believed–and there is no reason not to–that the PLO “are sending us messages.” That phrase, taken literally, indicates an ongoing process and obviously more than a single message. Why then did Carter and State Department officials wait to spring this only when Vance was a hap away from Israel? The answer almost suggests itself: to put Israel on the diplomatic griddle.

Until the announcement Monday, on the eve of Vance’s visit to Israel, the focus had been on a Mideast foreign ministers meeting in the U.S. next month. None other than President Anwar Sadat of Egypt suggested this to Vance when the two met last week In Alexandria. This proposal was immediately hailed by Begin. In fact, even after Syria and Jordan both rejected this as a feasible approach to the peace process, Begin publicly called upon President Hafez Assad of Syria and King Hussein of Jordan to reconsider.

Is it possible that Syria’s and Jordan’s rejection of this approach left the U.S. high and dry regarding a viable policy for a peace process? Is it possible that somewhere in the abysmal mentality of State Department Arabists Israel’s image looked too good and Jordan and Syria appeared to be the heavies in scuttling peace prospects? Apparently a quick change in the script was required. Hence the report was floated that the PLO might be favorably disposed toward Resolution 242, in the full knowledge that Israel would not accept the PLO as a Geneva participant.

Ironically, both Carter and Vance refrained from even a slight reprimand of the PLO when one of their spokesmen announced that “We are not ready to change our stand on 242 and we are not ready to recognize Israel. The rifles of the Palestinians are still the only solution.”

POSSIBLE DEAL WITH THE PLO

The most pessimistic observers of the Mideast scene noted that no reprimand was forthcoming because the U.S. may have already agreed, if not in direct contact then in reverse message “through the Syrians, the Saudi Arabians, the Egyptians and the Jordanians,” that the PLO would play a role at Geneva or, at the very least, at the foreign ministers talks.

The irony is that the Arab states have long ceased to care or be concerned about the PLO and, for that matter, the Palestinian people, despite the Rabat conference which conferred upon the PLO the status of being the sole spokesman for the Palestinians. The Arabs have been using the issue of the PLO as a means to thwart any peace moves and have been cynically exploiting the problems of the Palestinian refugees. Yet the U.S. is now more involved on behalf of the PLO than even the Arabs, and has provided a great deal of moral sustenance to this terrorist outfit.

The new squeeze play by the U.S. which emerged this week may only be the tip of the iceberg in American Mideast diplomacy which is characterized by Carter’s stance that the conflict there must be resolved with due speed. There may be other surprises soon in store for Israel. But one thing is certain: this is the beginning of a cold blast from Washington, personal friendships between Carter and Begin, notwithstanding.