COLUMN: When diplomacy falls flat

From Seth Lasser's, "For Mass Consumption," Fall '97 From Seth Lasser's, "For Mass Consumption," Fall '97 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington last week for an urgent meeting with President Bill Clinton. The strife in his nation had reached unbearable levels -- even today clashes in the streets continue unabated. Netanyahu presented a bold diplomatic initiative to Clinton in their mid-day meeting at the White House. His ostensible purpose: to put a stop to the low-level violence before it reached a more critical level.To achieve this, Netanyahu proposed changing the scope of the negotiations. The aim of the current round of negotiations is only to arrive at an interim solution by finding compromises for problems deemed less contentious. By this negotiating strategy, only after the completion of these talks will discussion of the most important and thus problematic issues begin -- those of the final status of the West Bank and Gaza. Netanyahu suggested this stage be bypassed and the so-called Final Status talks begin immediately. "As soon as violence against us stops we can clear up all outstanding questions in six months. If we don't manage that in that time, then [Chairman Yasir] Arafat, President Clinton and I can try to settle the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in a sort of Camp David summit," he stated at a press conference enroute to Washington. This idea is not new -- Netanyahu has been talking about it for months, on and off. The downside of the present approach is obvious. The interim-status agreements have proven to be easily influenced by day-to-day events. Do to this, they proceed at a painfully slow rate and self-imposed deadlines are never met -- best exemplified by the most recent agreement signed concerning Hebron. The headlines in Israel stayed the same from October to January -- "Hebron Agreement Soon," "Compromise Over Hebron Imminent" and "Conclusion of Talks Close." Netanyahu assumes a decision to move the talks to more existential issues will divorce them from day-to-day concerns and allow agreement to be reached at lightning-fast speed. It is hard to understand the justification for this belief. The chasm between the two parties is wider now than it has been since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Analysts and academics have devised plans ad nauseam whereby the Palestinians and Israelis could come to a series of "fair" compromises over the final shape and nature of the map. Examples abound. Certain villages considered by the Palestinians to comprise part of Jerusalem could become the capital of the Palestinian entity. Freedom to worship anywhere within the city could be protected by a joint task force. Some areas of Jewish settlement can be assimilated into Israel proper; others will be included in the Palestinian entity and the settlers themselves can decide whether or not to move. In theory, there is fertile ground in between the propagandized lines of the Israelis and Palestinians for a final settlement to take root. Within the context of the present, where stubborn rhetoric, violence and close-mindedness characterize the relationship between them, any such compromise is impossible. Beginning talks about borders when the Palestinian entity still comprises a small fraction of the Left Bank is obviously in Israel's interest. The great disparity of power between them would remain unchanged and Israel could dictate and challenge the terms of the agreement. How can we understand this proposal -- a naive policy suggestion made by a shrewd and realistic man? One must hearken back to August, to a period of particularly intense fighting between guerrillas in Lebanon and Israeli forces. The conflict in southern Lebanon between these forces has been going on for years; the guerrillas operate with active assistance of Iran and Syria, whose army governs Lebanon as a de facto puppet state. As a way to jump-start failing peace talks with Syria, Netanyahu made another radical diplomatic suggestion. Before discussing an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights -- the area captured from Syria in 1967 -- Israel and Syria should first broker a end to the fighting in southern Lebanon. If Syria would agree to reign in the guerrillas and let the Lebanese government exert itself in the area, Israel would unilaterally withdraw from Lebanon. On the surface, the concept made sense -- Israel would withdraw from Arab land without asking for any real concessions. Not surprisingly, the Arab world was aghast. If the pressure applied to the Israelis in Lebanon disappeared, nothing could ensure an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Netanyahu feigned shock -- "I find myself in an unbelievable situation, where the Israeli prime minister announces that he wants to withdraw from the territory of an Arab state, but the Syrian government and the Lebanese are in opposition." Israeli governmental officials chalked up a diplomatic victory -- Syrian President Hafez al-Asad was shown to be uninterested in achieving peace. In reality, the only effect of the failed initiative was to lessen the credibility of Netanyahu in the eyes of Arab leaders. He tried and failed to change the formula for solving some of the region's problems by surreptitiously putting Israeli interests before those of the Arabs. No one was fooled. The suggestion to switch to final status negotiations bears great resemblance to "Lebanon First." For a second time, Netanyahu has made a diplomatic overture intended to tip the balance of the peace process in Israel's favor. For a second time, the Arabs didn't fall for it, and Netanyahu came out looking naive instead of wise and calculating. Before discussion of the most critical issues can begin, the two sides must demonstrate their ability to conclude and implement agreements on a smaller scale. This is the idea of the Oslo Accords -- to build each side's confidence and trust in the other to the point where borders, capitals and refugees can be discussed. Netanyahu's proposal stands as an attempt to circumvent the agreed upon procedure for concluding the interim-status talks. Like "Lebanon First" it insults the intelligence of the leaders of the Arab world. No one trusts Netanyahu to preside fairly over final status talks; this intiative is doomed to be but a footnote in the history of the final settlement. Greater trust and confidence can only come through action. For now this means completing an overdue Israeli withdrawal from sparsely populated areas in the West Bank. If this is done within both the letter and the meaning of the Accords, it will do more to make the Palestinians trust the Israelis than any press conference could.