Middle East: Finally Face to Face

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Outside the conference hall there were a few grudging handshakes among advisers, but also shouted epithets like "terrorist!" and "murderer!" In formal sessions Arab, Palestinian and Israeli delegates would rarely even look one another in the eye as they denounced each other and laid their cases before the world, but nobody walked out. At the end of three days it was uncertain, in the most literal sense, where the talks were going: the delegates concluded the opening phase by quarreling bitterly about whether they should continue meeting in Madrid or move to some different venue.

This is a peace conference?

Absolutely, and already one for the history books. No amount of confrontational rhetoric could obscure the simple fact that Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs, sworn blood enemies for more than four decades, were sitting around a table, talking. The speechmaking in the tapestry-hung Hall of Columns of the Royal Palace in Madrid that opened the Middle East peace conference was, like a wedding or a baptism, a solemn rite symbolizing a new beginning. Come what may, the Mideast crisis, perhaps the longest-running and most envenomed in the world, had passed the point where the antagonists would not even talk.

Which is not to say that negotiations will succeed. The participants were talking to the U.S., the world, their own constituents, far more than to each other. If the conference started out about as well as could be expected, that is in part because everyone involved has learned to expect little. President Bush warned that no agreement could be foreseen in "a day or a week or a month or even a year." Meanwhile there would be snags, deadlocks, perhaps even temporary breakdowns.

So it was not surprising that both the Israelis and their adversaries began with statements that largely restated old grudges. Substantive discussions will come later -- maybe; the opening was devoted to public relations posturing and symbolism. The Arabs and Israelis were there only because Bush and U.S. Secretary of State James Baker had seen to it that they could not afford to be absent. Boycotting the talks would have given the boycotters a black eye in world opinion. Attending allowed them to play to the biggest audience ever.

Rival spin doctors advised more than 5,000 journalists how every word and gesture ought to be interpreted. Every part of the arrangements was calculated to make, or avoid, some symbolic point: no flags were allowed at the negotiating table, because the Israelis would not sit in the same room with a Palestine Liberation Organization banner.

On the outside chance the peace talks do break up, it will probably be over a symbolic point. Last week's opening was supposed to be followed on Sunday by bilateral negotiations in Madrid between Israel and each of three enemies: Syria, a Palestinian-Jordanian delegation and Lebanon. But the Israelis demanded that the talks be moved to the Middle East. By bringing Arab negotiators to Jerusalem, and then sending its own diplomats to Arab capitals, Israel hopes to achieve undeniable acknowledgment that its neighbors recognize it in fact, if not officially, as a genuine nation. For exactly that reason, the Arabs are resisting. A possible compromise discussed at week's end was to move the talks to another European city, Cairo or Washington.

The main participants played their hands with varying degrees of skill and clumsiness last week:

-- THE U.S. scored a considerable victory by getting the talks started at all, dramatizing its unchallenged status as the world's sole remaining superpower. Bush did not need to make that point; Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev did it for him. The Soviet Union -- "a country that exists only outside its borders," in the cruel summation of an American official -- is nominally co- chairman of the conference, and its participation enabled some Arabs to claim that they were not just knuckling under to the U.S. But Gorbachev made it clear that Moscow would now fade into the background and pretty much go along with whatever the U.S. wants.

The delicate U.S. task is to keep the talks moving without getting trapped into so direct a role that it would seem to be arm-twisting one side or the other. Bush and Baker tiptoed through that minefield adroitly enough last week. The President reassured a wary Israeli delegation by speaking of "territorial compromise" instead of "land for peace," a formula that Israelis loathe. He also backed the Israeli view that the conference should lead not just to nonbelligerency but to "real peace." Explained Bush: "I mean treaties. Security. Diplomatic relations. Economic relations. Trade. Investment. Cultural exchange. Even tourism." At the same time, he responded to an Arab concern by calling for everyone to "avoid unilateral acts" that might "prejudice" the peace process. Translation: Israel, stop building those settlements in the occupied territories.

The U.S. went home praying that its strategy of putting the volatile elements together in a room would in time produce enough chemical heat to generate compromise -- but not enough to cause an explosion. Baker closed the round by sharply chiding delegates for failing to look to the future, but judging when and how to step in to bridge gaps will be the real test of the Administration's success.

-- ISRAEL bowed to American decisions that elevated the Palestinians to near equal status, giving the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation two of everything: two conference rooms, two briefings, even two speeches at the sessions. Those concessions allowed Israel to soften its image of intransigence.

Then Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir blew it, big. He has always vowed never to give up an inch of territory, and he did not change that stance; he devoted half of his 34-minute speech to a recitation of the oppression of Jews through centuries and indeed millenniums. There was little in his speech to suggest a willingness to compromise, and he followed up on Friday with a bitter blast at Syria's brutality and tyranny. But Shamir was playing less to world opinion than expressing deep convictions that also work for him politically back home. He had appeased Israeli peaceniks by attending the conference while reassuring his hard-line supporters that he remains unbending on issues that count.

-- SYRIA was quite as intransigent. Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa told the conference that Israel must give up "every inch" of the lands conquered in 1967. The next day he directed a ferocious personal diatribe at Shamir. The Syrians came across as bellicose tough guys who seemed to have no idea how to play to a worldwide audience -- and maybe didn't care. They only had to please an audience of one: Hafez Assad.

-- THE PALESTINIANS were big winners. Instead of the unshaven face of Yasser Arafat, they presented an image of intelligence, professionalism and sensitivity. They sounded the most conciliatory notes and made the first substantive concession, explicitly saying they will now accept the limited self-rule they spurned when it was offered as part of the Camp David agreement.

Haidar Abdul-Shafi, head of the Palestinian delegation, easily trumped Shamir. Though the substance of his talk was in many ways just as unyielding, its tone was mild, not complaining or self-righteous. He too was playing a public relations game, appealing to the Israeli peace movement and worldwide sympathizers.

More than public relations is involved in making peace, of course. The differences are real, the anxieties and fears -- and ancient hostility -- genuine. But paradoxically, p.r. may offer some hope. If both sides figured that they could not afford to stay away from this conference, they might calculate that they also cannot afford to let it break down, and thus they might be drawn to offer concessions -- minimal and grudging, to be sure -- to keep it going. Maybe not. But if in the Middle East it is always wise to prepare for the worst, it is equally necessary to expect the unexpected.

With reporting by Lisa Beyer, Dean Fischer and J.F.O. McAllister/Madrid