February 1992, Page 8, 84

Special Report

Why the US Joined the UN in "Strongly Condemning" Israel

By Richard H. Curtiss

"In the current cynical atmosphere in Israel, when everything is up for sale, it is possible that the betrayal of Russian Jewry can pass in silence. But in the history of the Jewish people the forfeit of the loan guarantees for the red lentil pottage of the settlements will be remembered as the greatest betrayal committed by the Jewish community in Israel since its neglect of European Jewry during World War II." -Washington correspondent Rami Tal of Yediot Ahronot, Israeli's largest daily, in the Washington Jewish Week, Jan. 9, 1992

During preliminary matches between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and the administration of US President George Bush, two little noticed reports revealed the intensity of the battle that led finally to the opening of Middle East peace talks.

On a visit to Washington, Shamir spent some time alone with Bush in the president's office. His aides made it known that he had with him in a briefcase documents concerning prior US-Israeli relations that might be embarrassing to a Republican administration if they found their way to the press.

During one of his eight shuttle missions to Jerusalem, when US Secretary of State Baker seemed to have reached a total impasse with the Israeli prime minister, Baker stood and remarked: "I guess we'll have to leave matters to the United Nations."

An agitated Shamir persuaded him to sit down again. Right after that, Baker was informed that his mother had died and he cut short his visit to Israel. Terms favorable to a reluctant Shamir for Israel's attendance at a peace conference were hammered out on subsequent Baker visits, and the problem was not left "to the United Nations."

Instead, to get Israel to the peace table the US vetoed Security Council resolutions deploring Israeli violations of international law in Jerusalem and the occupied territories. And, as a reward for Israeli attendance at the Madrid and Washington talks, US Ambassador to the UN Thomas Pickering bulldozed through the UN General Assembly a rescission of its resolution that "Zionism is a form of racial discrimination."

Shamir, however, gave away nothing at the peace table. Instead, "retaliating" against separate attacks in which Palestinian extremists opposed to the peace talks killed four Israeli civilians in the occupied territories, Israeli police and military forces either tolerated or actively participated in a series of outrages against the entire Palestinian population under occupation.

The aim was not just to pander to the settler parties so vital to the ruling Likud coalition, an Israeli spin-control media commentators put it. In fact, it was to enrage the Palestinians and other Arabs sufficiently so that they would break off the peace talks.

After putting Palestinian towns near the sites of the killings under curfew, settlers were allowed to rampage through them, destroying cars and shooting out house windows. Israeli troops enforcing the curfews prevented Palestinians from emerging from their homes to protect their communities.

The UN could begin the same sanctions initially imposed against Iraq.

Then Shamir's government outdid itself. It issued deportation orders against 12 Palestinian residents of the occupied territories. None were charged with personal involvement in the attacks on Israelis. The order was issued on allegations that the deportees were activists in the rejectionist PFLP, the mainstream Al Fatah, and the Islamic Hamas organization.

In the past, the US has labeled such deportations violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention. When the US protested accordingly, however, Shamir did nothing.

Then, on instructions from PLO officials in Tunis, Palestinian delegates began playing a dangerous diplomatic game of threatening not to show up for the second round of peace talks in Washington. As one of the West Bank delegates sadly commented, "If Shamir's aim is to break up the peace talks, he has succeeded." In a reluctant show of solidarity, Jordanian, Syrian and Lebanese delegates also delayed their arrival for second-round January talks in Washington. It was an uninspiring replay of the Israeli tactic of delaying the arrival of its delegation at the December first-round talks by one week.

PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat began pressure Jan. 5 for a United Nations Security Council resolution on Israeli deportations. The US made no effort to soften the language, nor did it abstain from the voting. As a result the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution saying the UN "strongly condemns the decision of Israel, the occupying Power, to resume deportations of Palestinian civilians."

"We have repeatedly urged the government of Israel immediately and permanently to cease deportations," Pickering explained, "We have therefore voted in favor of this resolution, which calls on Israel to refrain from deporting any Palestinian civilian from the occupied territories."

The resolution contained the harshest language ever directed by the Security Council against Israel. More important, however, was the sentence in the resolution that "requests Israel, the occupying Power, to ensure the safe and immediate return to the occupied territories of all those deported." Because there have been 67 previous deportations, this is a ticking timebomb.

If, after a reasonable period, Israel has taken no steps to repatriate the deportees, the UN could begin the same staged series of sanctions intially imposed against Iraq in an effort to force it to withdraw peacefully from Kuwait. That, however, depends upon whether the US might really decide, in exasperation with Shamir's intransigence, "to leave matters to the United Nations."

A Precarious Palestinian Ploy

As a result of the resolution, Arab delegations enplaned for Washington and the mid-January round of talks, which Israel already had announced it would end on Jan. 15. It had been, howeverm a precarious Palestinian ploy. The Palestinians have little to lose and much to gain just by showing up, and the world knows it. When they threatened not to, hope soared among Israeli hard-liners that the talks could be brought to a halt in a way that would put the onus on the Arabs, not Israel. That would avert the otherwise inevitable showdown between Israel and the US.

Shamir has no intention of giving back "an inch" of occupied land for peace. Despite the best efforts of his powerful US lobby, his hopes of obtaining further unconditional US loan guarantees and economic assistance are therefore running out.

Rather than freezing the settlements, Shamir may shortly bring down his own government in hopes of stalling for time while praying that Bush will not be re-elected. If, as its own last resort, the US steps aside to leave matters to the United Nations, that could quickly lead to an "imposed peace," based upon UN Security Council Resolution 242's land-for-peace formula. It's a logical solution to which the Arab parties and the US already have agreed, annd one that a large percentage of the Israeli electorate has indicated it can live with. Logic, unfortunately, does not always prevail when unknown factors are involved. One such unknown factor is whatever was in the briefcase Shamir took with him into President Bush's office.

Richard H. Curtiss is executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

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