Missing a Rare Chance

By William E. Smith

Arafat's "no" to Hussein hinders Reagan 's plan

Like a jet-age symbol of the Palestinian diaspora, Yasser Arafat seemed to be at home only inside the fuselage of an airplane last week. As diplomats on several continents tried in vain to understand the latest political maneuvers in the Middle East, the shrewd survivor who runs the Palestine Liberation Organization jetted from South Yemen to North Yemen to Sweden and then to Tunisia, supposedly to attend a high-level P.L.O. policy meeting. But soon after arriving in Tunis, he left for a quick trip to Bulgaria, finally returning to Tunisia. Amid all this frenetic travel, whose purpose only the P.L.O. chairman himself could fathom, Arafat studiously managed to avoid going back to Jordan, where he had been engaged in intense discussions with King Hussein a week earlier. By not doing so, he dealt a crippling and possibly fatal blow to the bold Middle East peace plan that Ronald Reagan had proposed last September.

At stake was the future of the 1.3 million Palestinians who live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin's goal is to accelerate the Jewish settlement of the West Bank, filling it with so many Israelis that the process of colonization will be irreversible. Indeed, on the same day the talks between Arafat and Hussein broke down, Israeli newspapers reported a government plan to build 57 more settlements in the West Bank, in order to achieve the goal of putting 100,000 Israeli settlers in the territory by 1986. Arafat's inability to agree on a joint diplomatic strategy with King Hussein to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians had exasperated Hussein to the point that he announced he would no longer try to negotiate along the lines of the Reagan plan. It also raised the question of whether the internally divided P.L.O. was still capable of defending the interests of its Palestinian constituency or whether, as its critics charge, it was now more interested in assuring its own survival as an organization.

President Reagan was caught off guard by the news from Amman, but he tried to down-play its significance. After telephoning King Hussein as well as King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Reagan declared that he was still "very hopeful" that his peace plan could remain the basis of future negotiations. Two days later, blaming the breakdown of the Amman talks on "radical elements" of the P.L.O., the President called on the Palestinian leadership to make "a bold and courageous move to break the [prevailing] deadlock." Added Reagan: "We will not permit the forces of violence and terror to exercise a veto over the peace process." Shortly thereafter, Arafat hinted to Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in Stockholm that he might still pursue negotiations with King Hussein.

Even if the Reagan plan was not dead, it was certainly comatose. And there were plenty of parties to blame for the fact that an idea that had received broad U.S. and European support had failed to have any lasting impact on the Middle East. Begin did not help by declaring Reagan's plan "stillborn" one week after the President's speech, or by stepping up the pace of settlement in the occupied territories. The U.S. never followed through with the kind of diplomatic pressure that would impress all the various parties in the Middle East. And the Palestinians missed a historic opportunity by refusing to make the essential concession--recognition of Israel's right to exist--that could have brought Israel to the bargaining table.

It was a week when everything seemed to be falling apart, and it began with the assassination in Portugal of Dr. Issam Sartawi, 47, a P.L.O. moderate who had repeatedly told his Palestinian colleagues that they should recognize Israel. A roving envoy for the P.L.O., Sartawi was attending a meeting of the Socialist International when he was gunned down by a lone assailant in the lobby of a hotel. Though Arafat blamed the murder of his old friend on Israeli intelligence, a radical Palestinian group known as the Abu Nidal faction, which split from the P.L.O. in 1974, quickly claimed responsibility. Sartawi's crime: favoring a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Arab states as "the only civilized solution for the Middle East."

Scarcely six hours later, the Jordanian Cabinet announced that it had failed to reach an agreement with the P.L.O. and that King Hussein would not be taking part in any peace talks based on the Reagan plan, which envisions a future relationship between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The announcement came at the end of months of intermittent negotiations between Jordan and the P.L.O. and several days of intensive discussions between Hussein and Arafat. The P.L.O. leader then left for Kuwait but promised to return to Amman within a few days, presumably to work out the final details of an agreement. The resulting document, which would have set forth the terms under which Jordan and the P.L.O. would enter peace talks over the West Bank and Gaza, could have set the whole peace process in motion. But Arafat soon discovered that he did not have the support of his organization, and Hussein concluded that he could not proceed at this stage without P.L.O. backing. His Cabinet announced: "We in Jordan, having refused from the beginning to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians, will neither act separately nor in lieu of anybody in Middle East peace negotiations."

There were, needless to say, conflicting accounts as to what had gone wrong. Though Arafat and Hussein had always been political rivals and, on occasion, enemies, they had agreed during their recent negotiations on several important points. Among them: Jordan and the P.L.O. would pursue "joint action at all levels"; they would seek a confederal relationship between the West Bank-Gaza entity and Jordan, rather than the fully independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza that the P.L.O. had always favored; and they would form some sort of joint delegation to any future peace talks.

Nonetheless, many details remained to be resolved. Hussein was determined to extract from Arafat a clear-cut statement of policy that could lead to peace talks. He argued that the so-called Fez plan, in which Arab leaders last September had called for a fully independent Palestinian state, was unworkable because it required negotiations through an international body rather than through Israel and the U.S. On the other hand, said the King, the Reagan plan "presented the vehicle that could propel the Fez plan forward," leading the Arabs in the direction of some of their long-cherished goals.

Arafat did not disagree. But he was concerned that the Reagan Administration had proved itself ineffectual in bringing pressure on Israel. He also complained that the Reagan plan failed to specify a role for the P.L.O. in the peace process and, even more important, did not recognize the Palestinian peoples' right to self-determination. Hussein argued that the Reagan plan offered the last real hope of preventing Begin from completing his absorption of the occupied territories. Over and over, they came up against the basic unresolved question: Would the P.L.O. recognize the existence of Israel, the price demanded by Washington as a precondition for P.L.O. participation in any negotiations? When Hussein said that the P.L.O. should accept Security Council Resolution 242, passed in 1967, Arafat pointed out that 242 referred to the Palestinians as a refugee problem. To him, this attitude was a symbol of the victimization of the Palestinians by Israelis, the Western powers and even the other Arabs in the years before the P.L.O. was strong enough to defend Palestinian rights.

Finally, the two men settled on a draft agreement in which Jordan and the P.L.O. pledged to act jointly on future peace initiatives, including the Reagan plan, but did not refer specifically to Resolution 242. Hussein thought that this proposal would be acceptable to the U.S. and that the document would lead to further negotiations. But Arafat did not sign the agreement during his final meeting with the King. Instead, he told Hussein that he wanted to consult with some P.L.O. colleagues and with certain Arab governments and that he would come back to Amman in about 48 hours. He did not return, though he sent two aides back to Amman to confer with the King.

What went wrong? The U.S. view is that when Arafat reached Kuwait with the draft proposal, he walked into a political ambush set by P.L.O. hard-liners influenced by Syria and, indirectly, by the Soviet Union. During meetings in Kuwait, P.L.O. leaders took out the reference to the Reagan plan and emphasized their support of the Fez proposals. Furthermore, they insisted that the P.L.O., not King Hussein, would be the sole negotiating force in any future peace talks. When he learned of the changes, the King broke off the negotiations.

But there was more to the failure than a simple break between Arafat and P.L.O. hardliners. Six months ago, when Arafat began his search for an acceptable way of becoming involved in the Reagan initiative, he was opposed by only three minor P.L.O. factions, all of them clearly under Syrian tutelage. By February, when the P.L.O.'s de facto parliament, the Palestine National Council, met in Algiers, rejectionist sentiment had spread to the mainstream of the organization.

Even before he left Amman, Arafat knew that the draft agreement was in trouble. In Kuwait, he met with the central council of Fatah, the largest component of the P.L.O., and encountered more opposition than he had expected. Late that week Arafat sent Hussein a rejection not only of the Reagan plan but of some of the principles that he and the King had previously accepted as the basis of their negotiations. The message: the P.L.O. would not give up its role as the sole representative of the Palestinians, and its goal was still the creation of an independent state.

Arafat knew how Hussein would react to the news, and it was no accident that he chose not to deliver the message himself. Says a P.L.O. official who was close to the negotiations: "Arafat is always shrewd enough to make sure that he will have a chance to fight another day. The way the message was sent to Hussein was designed to make Arafat seem to be the great voice of moderation." At that point, having scuttled Hussein's hopes and sown an inordinate amount of confusion, Arafat left for South Yemen.

Upon hearing the bad news, U.S. officials insisted that the President's peace initiative remained the core of American policy. In an unusually angry mood, Secretary of State George Shultz declared that if the P.L.O. continued to drag its heels, the Arab states should stop thinking of it as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinians, a status it acquired at a 1974 Arab summit in Rabat, Morocco. Said Shultz: "There is a saying around here, 'Use it or lose it.' If people have the ability to do something, then they ought to measure up to those responsibilities."

The Administration pointed out that King Hussein, one of its best friends in the Middle East, had done as much as he could to make "any settlement that might be reached more meaningful." This was apparently lost on Congress. In a curiously shortsighted move, a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee voted to make future U.S. arms sales to Jordan contingent on Hussein's willingness to join the Camp David negotiations and grant diplomatic recognition to Israel. Further undermining the Administration's position, the same subcommittee added $365 million to President Reagan's request for $2.45 billion in economic and military aid to Israel in fiscal 1984.

In truth, Hussein was probably less to blame than any of the other main participants in the Middle East debacle. Last September he hailed the Reagan plan as "courageous and positive" and promised to cooperate with it as best he could. The Administration assured the King, when he visited Washington in December, that if he would publicly state his willingness to enter negotiations, the U.S. would try to pressure Israel into freezing the construction of settlements. But the talks between Lebanon and Israel languished, and colonization of the West Bank continued at a rapid pace. Washington's inability to deliver on its promises eroded the Administration's credibility with Hussein and other moderate Arab leaders, making them hesitant to become involved in bold diplomatic initiatives. As a result, the King's peace campaign, like the Reagan plan on which it was based, appeared headed for the Middle East's ever expanding museum of missed opportunities.

The Israeli government reacted with relief to news that the Arafat-Hussein talks had failed. When President Reagan proposed his plan last September, Prime Minister Begin reminded the Knesset that the West Bank, which he refers to as Judea and Samaria, "will be for the Jewish people for generations upon generations." Said outgoing Israeli Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan last week: "The settlements will be established, and all the Arabs can do about it is scurry around like doped cockroaches in a bottle." Few Israeli officials would express their views so callously, but this blind determination to retain a captured territory whose population is 96% Palestinian Arab remains at the very core of the Middle East stalemate.

Much of the blame for the present impasse falls on the Arabs. Arafat has known for months that he could make progress toward negotiations only if he forged an agreement with Hussein on a joint diplomatic strategy. Arab moderates have advised Arafat that, given the pressures imposed by the rapid Israeli colonization of the West Bank, it might be time to use the P.L.O.'s ultimate weapon--recognition of Israel's right to exist--in a bold show of statesmanship. But Arafat allowed the unity and preservation of the P.L.O. to take precedence over the interests of the West Bank's residents. Similarly, moderate Arab leaders like Saudi Arabia's King Fahd have been reluctant to apply much pressure on Arafat.

The Reagan plan also had its faults and misconceptions. It intentionally minimized the role of the P.L.O. in the peace process, giving Arafat little to work for. In the same way, it made no direct mention of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war and formally annexed in 1981, leaving the Syrians with no incentive to cooperate. Then, scarcely a fortnight after the plan was announced, came the assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel, the Israeli move into West Beirut, and the massacre of an estimated 700 to 800 Arab civilians by Lebanese Christian militiamen. Angry that their military victory in Lebanon was turning into a political disaster, the Israelis set back the timetable for withdrawal of their troops from Lebanon. They were motivated partly by the desire to negotiate guarantees of security along their northern border, partly by the wish to deflect attention from the hated Reagan initiative until it died of inertia.

The irony is that, having suffered so serious a setback in its efforts to bring Hussein and the Palestinians to the conference table, the U.S. seems to be making progress at last in the negotiations between Israel and Lebanon. U.S. Special Envoy Philip Habib has told the Israelis that he saw a letter in which Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam assured his Lebanese counterpart, Elie Salem, that "when the last Israeli leaves, the last Syrian will leave."

Washington has become more concerned about Syria as the Soviet Union has continued to resupply advanced weapons designed to help Syria avoid a repetition of the humiliating losses it suffered in air battles with Israeli jets last summer. Most important is a new air defense system, which includes two SA-5 sites manned by as many as 2,000 Soviet technicians and advisers. These long-range antiaircraft missiles have never before been deployed outside the Warsaw Pact. Their sophistication and range make them a threat to Israeli aircraft flying not only over Syria and Lebanon but over most of Israel as well.

For the moment, the Reagan Administration does not appear to have a well-defined plan as to what it should do next. There have been suggestions that Secretary of State Shultz should make a trip to the region himself, instead of relying only on subordinates like Habib. Officials have also proposed inviting King Hussein and other moderate Arab leaders to Washington for talks. But there were precious few hints of a future strategy last week beyond the assertion that the U.S. was sticking to the outlines of the Reagan plan. The problem with that, noted William Quandt, a former National Security Council staff member, is that "you can't salvage the plan just by pushing the same button harder." Whatever the Administration decides to do, the heightened Soviet military presence in Syria is an unnerving reminder that the residue of former wars can become the seeds of future conflict on a wider scale. The tragedy of the Middle East today is that too many people have an interest in keeping the fire alive. --By William E. Smith. Reported by Roberto Suro/Amman and Gregory H. Wierzynski/Washington

With reporting by Roberto Suro/Amman and Gregory H. Wierzynski/Washington This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.