Shaky Middle East hopes

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 14

Shaky Middle East hopes

It is by no means certain yet that the Geneva conference on the Middle East will be reconvened. Israel appears to have patched up its differences with the United States; but the suspicion clings in Israel that President Carter’s efforts to engage the Soviet Union in the talks, if they are reopened, may mean that the terms of a Middle East settlement will be more or less pre-arranged. Such terms, in the Israeli view, could include joint American-Russian recognition of Palestinian “rights” to a “homeland” on the West Bank of the Jordan, and an Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied Arab territory. Israel would not consent to any arrangement so sweeping, although Mr Begin’s Government has agreed to a partial withdrawal provided frontier security is safeguarded. , When the Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Moshe Dayan, visited Washington last month, he took home with him the terms for a new beginning at Geneva which the Russian Foreign Minister, Mr Andrei Gromyko, had helped to draft. They were finally approved by the Israeli Parliament. It was accepted that Arabs—including the Palestinians, would be represented at the opening session. The Palestinians would participate in talks on the West Bank and the Gaza strip, but Israel might walk out of the talks if the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s demand for a separate State were pressed by the other parties. The Egyptian President, Mr Anwar Sadat, who has strong views on the legality of Palestinian claims, is apparently eager to air them in Geneva. He thinks the P.L.O. should link itself with Jordan as a government-in-exile, and go to Geneva in that capacity. The Syrian approach is that the P.L.O. should be

invited to appear as a separate delegation. The Jordanians submit that the Palestinians should have their own unit in an Arab delegation. So it goes on. The Arab States appear anxious to compose their differences in the interests of a display of unity against Israel at Geneva. They say that, with American and Russian support, there could be a consensus requiring Israel to withdraw to something close to its 1976 frontiers, and requiring also acceptance of the P.L.O. as a political entity. It is difficult to see where all this is leading to, especially as there is a widespread feeling in Israel that the Palestinians should not be allowed to take any part at all in framing a Middle East settlement. Thus the dilemma for those who want to reconvene the Geneva talks must appear as a very real one. A breakdown in such circumstances would be a disaster, perhaps spelling the end of peace hopes altogether. Against that, of course, is the view that the main thing is to get the conference restarted. Its own momentum, the optimists think, would keep it going, as a kind of safety-valve against the danger of recurring war. In the light of experience, it is not easy to feel that such optimism is well founded.

Action in southern Lebanon in the last week has done nothing to raise optimism about the Geneva talks. Rocket attacks on villages have been blamed by the Israelis on Palestinians; Israeli artillery and air raids, purportedly aimed at guerrillas but in fact inflicting death on many civilians, have not helped the chances of success at Geneva in spite of the latest encouragement from Mr Carter and from Mr Sadat.