Gloom in Israel, Joy for the Arabs

The U.S. wants the Palestinians at Geneva

Rosh Hashanah last week marked the first day of 5738 according to the Jewish calendar, but it was not a happy new year in Israel. In Egypt, meanwhile, a smiling President Anwar Sadat declared that it was the best gift he had received for Bairam, the joyful Muslim festival that follows the month-long Ramadan fast. The gift--and the cause of Israeli gloom --was a U.S. policy statement issued by the State Department to the effect that Palestinians "must be represented" at any reconvened Geneva peace talks. Coming on the eve of Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan's visit to Washington this week, the statement was clearly intended as a warning to Israel not to put any more roadblocks along the way to Geneva. President Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance will discuss reconvening the peace parley with both Dayan and Arab foreign ministers coming to the U.S. for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly.

Before making the statement public, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Philip Habib summoned Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz and handed him a draft. Dinitz read in stony silence. "The Palestinians must be involved in the peacemaking process," the document said. "Their representatives will have to be at Geneva for the Palestinian question to be solved." The statement went on to conclude that "all of the participants in the peace conference should adhere to the terms" of United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for secure borders for all Middle East states.

One State Department official tried to reassure an Israeli diplomat that "if the statement puts pressure on anyone, it puts pressure on both sides." Nonetheless, there was little doubt that the real intent of the announcement was to tighten the screws another turn or two on Israeli Premier Menachem Begin. Following a series of U.S. protests against new Israeli settlements in the West Bank and other occupied territories, the statement appeared to presage an ultimate confrontation between Jerusalem and Washington. The Administration is perplexed by seeming discrepancies between Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon's disclosures about secret new settlements in the West Bank (TIME, Sept. 12) and Dayan's patent denials to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis that there is any change in Israeli policy. Said one Washington official in exasperation: "There is at least the appearance of duplicity here--with Sharon playing the bad cop and Dayan the good cop. There's an undercurrent of feeling around here that the Israelis are jerking us around a bit."

The Israelis answer that any difference between Sharon and Dayan is more semantic than real. As one diplomat in Jerusalem puts it, "There are so many settlements in the pipeline that at any one time Sharon can say new ones are being secretly established. Yet Dayan can also say that settlements are part of the government's plan for the West Bank, so what is so secret about them? The important fact is that new settlements are being established." Indeed they are. Last week scores of Israelis attended the dedication of a new settlement at Reihana, near the West Bank Arab town of Jenin; although now only a tent city for paramilitary troops, Reihana within a year will have permanent buildings for civilian settlers.

Speaking to European Jewish leaders in Brussels before leaving for the U.S., Dayan asserted that in any conceivable peace agreement "boundaries will determine settlements [in the West Bank] but settlements do not necessarily determine boundaries." As for the Palestinian issue, Dayan said "it was less dangerous" for Israel to oppose a Palestinian state and risk a war now than it would be to accept such a state and risk a war in the future when, presumably, hostile groups would be resident in a sovereign state next door.

The Arabs took the Washington statement as a boost to their cause. Reaction was jubilant. Announcers excitedly broke into radio and television programs in Cairo, Damascus, Amman and Beirut to report Washington's support for the Palestinians. Cairo's influential daily al Ahram editorialized that the statement "shows positively that the American approach is sincere and honest." Damascus' semi-official al Baath worriedly noted that Washington made no mention of the P.L.O.--but that did not seem to bother its leader, Yasser Arafat. He called Washington's stand "a turning point" and a "positive step."

Dayan, meanwhile, arrives in Washington with an Israeli-proposed "peace treaty" that he admits in advance will be unacceptable to the Arabs. The plan would, among other things, grant West Bank Palestinians a measure of autonomy over their internal affairs, but give Israel the right to keep troops in the area and conduct its foreign affairs. Washington is not happy about the plan, and Dayan will be told firmly that in the coming weeks it is going to be up to the Israelis more than the Arabs to show some signs of compromise. "The Arab moderates are holding on as best they can in the face of a very provocative situation in Israel and on the West Bank," said one Middle East expert in Washington last week. "We just can't expect them to give much until Israel starts showing a little give."

One possible compromise proposal the Administration will discuss with Dayan is that Israel negotiate at Geneva with a pan-Arab delegation, including representatives of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinians. The idea is one of four alternative plans for reconvening Geneva that Vance took with him to the Middle East last month. From the Administration's vantage, the proposal would remove from individual Arab countries the onus of making concessions to Israel and also get around Israel's rejection of a separate Palestinian delegation. Unfortunately, neither side is very hopeful about it. The Arabs, with their own political differences, would find it impractical and unwieldy to negotiate as a team. As for the Israelis, Jerusalem would prefer to sign peace agreements with each of the confrontation states. Barring a surprise, it still looked like a long, long way to Geneva.

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