Middle East End of a Peace Initiative

By William E. Smith

More than any other Arab leader apart from the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, King Hussein of Jordan has worked for a negotiated settlement of the explosive Arab-Israeli conflict. Last week, drained after months of unsuccessful efforts to enlist Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, into the peace process, Hussein announced that he had reached "an end to another chapter in the search for peace."

Hussein made the announcement in an emotional 3 1/2-hour speech over Jordanian television, addressed to 1.3 million Palestinians in the Israeli- occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as to his own 2.8 million subjects. The King thus broke off a year-old partnership with Arafat in which the two Arab leaders had sought ways to resolve the Palestinian problem through negotiations with Israel. Said the weary Hussein: "Yes, brothers and sisters, we have gone through a grueling year of intensive effort and faced a host of obstacles, in many instances exceeding the limits of our endurance."

As recently as Jan. 25, the King said, he had secured a new concession from the Reagan Administration. The U.S. had agreed to allow the P.L.O. to take part in an international peace conference if the organization agreed to three conditions: endorse United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, implicitly recognizing Israel's right to exist; be prepared to negotiate with Israel; and renounce terrorism. But Arafat, fearful of creating still another split within his fractured organization, refused to accept the resolutions. Accordingly, an angry Hussein, who thought he had previously reached an agreement with Arafat, announced that he was unable to continue to work with the P.L.O. leaders "until such time as their word becomes their bond, characterized by commitment, credibility and constancy." The sympathies of West Bank Palestinians were torn, as always, between Hussein and the P.L.O. Some hoped, as did the Israelis, that Hussein might attempt another initiative in league with the local leadership of the occupied territories. But Hussein gave every indication last week that he would still abide by the Arab states' Rabat resolution of 1974, recognizing the P.L.O. as "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people."

Even as Hussein was delivering the speech that ended his peace overture, more fighting was going on 100 miles to the northwest. Early last week a Lebanese Muslim fundamentalist group called the Islamic Resistance Front, which is dominated by the Shi'ite Hizballah (Party of God), attacked a small Israeli convoy in southern Lebanon and kidnaped two wounded Israeli soldiers. Within hours, some 1,200 Israeli troops pounded across the border in their biggest operation since their army withdrew from southern Lebanon last June. The mission: not only to find and rescue the two missing Israelis, but to root out guerrilla bases used for staging attacks inside the border security zone and against northern Israel. During the raid, at least 15 Lebanese and two Israeli servicemen were killed. At week's end, the Israelis began to withdraw troops, following reports that the captured soldiers were not in the area. One of them may have been executed.

The week's fighting was something of a setback for Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who counts last year's withdrawal from Lebanon as one of his proudest achievements. Since a total of 656 Israeli soldiers were killed in Lebanon between the invasion in June 1982 and the pullout in June 1985, Peres has often said that the withdrawal was saving 20 Israeli lives a week.

Moreover, his Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin has been able to claim that the Lebanese border was safer than it had been for years. With the support of only a few hundred Israeli soldiers, the Israeli-backed, predominantly Christian South Lebanon Army militia has been notably effective in preventing Palestinian-inspired attacks across the Israeli frontier. At the same time, the mainstream Shi'ite Amal militia in southern Lebanon has not opposed Israeli efforts to keep down the level of P.L.O. activity, but it cannot afford to risk a confrontation with Hizballah, which has a considerable following among the Shi'ite Muslims of the south.

. Peres now faces a political dilemma. Any suggestion that Israel was returning to an "iron fist" policy in southern Lebanon might satisfy his Likud coalition partners. But a prolonged Israeli presence there would anger moderate Arab governments and undermine whatever prospects remain for Middle East peace talks. After King Hussein's announcement, however, those prospects already seemed pale indeed.

The failure of Hussein's initiative leaves behind lots of losers. The Reagan Administration is now without an ongoing peace strategy for the Middle East. Hussein is more vulnerable than ever to the Syrians and to his own Palestinian population. He will probably feel a need to seek closer ties with his old adversary Syrian President Hafez Assad. The breakdown in talks may precipitate a new round of violence by Palestinians, who see diplomacy failing once again to resolve their problems. And it vastly increases the likelihood that Peres will be obliged to exchange jobs in the fall with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, head of the Likud. Under the terms of the prevailing coalition agreement, each man is supposed to hold the top position for 25 months. If Hussein's peace initiative had succeeded, Peres might have been able to call elections to determine whether Israel should participate. But in the absence of so important a national issue, he will presumably have little excuse for not stepping aside in October.

With reporting by Ron Ben-Yishai/Jerusalem and Scott MacLeod/Cairo