Shamir and the Future

In his meetings with President Reagan in Washington this week, Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir wouldn’t say yes and wouldn’t say no to the American peace plan for the Middle East, contending that since his coalition Cabinet hasn’t yet voted on the proposal he lacked the authority to give a conclusive answer. This, of course, was more than a shade disingenuous, given Shamir’s earlier refusal to permit the Cabinet to vote before his U.S. trip as its Labor Party members wanted to do. This absence of a vote allowed Shamir to avoid two uncomfortable possibilities: He didn’t have to face the outside risk that most of his colleagues might see merit in the U.S. idea of trading occupied land for peace, which he finds anathema, and, at the same time, he didn’t have to worry about the storm of blame that would follow if Israel formally said no to the U.S. effort.

In the absence of a clear Israeli rejection, some Reagan Administration officials are suggesting that Secretary of State George P. Shultz might see value in resuming his Middle East peacemaking efforts later this year. Never-say-die is a laudable attitude to bring to the conduct of diplomacy. So is realism. Right now the reality of Middle East politics pretty clearly indicates that the Shultz plan is dead.

The intrinsic political merit of the American peace plan--giving all parties less than they demand and requiring all to give up more than they want--has also been its undoing. Thus the Palestine Liberation Organization rejects the U.S. approach for the usual reasons that it contains no provision for the creation of a Palestinian state, nor does it recognize the PLO as the only negotiating entity for the Palestinian people. Thus Syria, consistent in its rejectionism, denounces the plan as a trap and a delusion. Jordan says that it sees “positive elements” in the plan, but with one nervous eye on Syria and the other on the PLO it has been careful to commit itself to nothing. Israel, on its part, remains paralyzed by indecision. Half the government, led by Foreign Minster Shimon Peres, favors the U.S. plan. The other half, Shamir’s half, rejects it.

Unless Israel’s politicians agree to hold early elections, Shamir will stay on as prime minister until November. After elections, early or on schedule, he may well continue in that office into the 1990s. Shamir comes from a political tradition that on historic and legal grounds believes in Israel’s right to sovereignty over all of Palestine. It is not just unlikely but virtually inconceivable that he and those who think like him would ever agree to giving up any West Bank territory in a peace settlement.

Other Israelis in and out of government of course believe differently, but without a popular mandate to act their beliefs are politically ineffective. For now, once more, the maximalists, the rejectionists, the no-compromisers on both sides are in the saddle, their presence a guarantee that the political impasse will remain and probably even deepen. But the deadlock in diplomacy has not prevented movement on the ground, movement that has become increasingly violent and destructive and that is inexorably changing the face and the nature of the occupation on the West Bank and in Gaza, in the process threatening to change the very nature of Israel itself.