A Warning Shot Across Begin's Bow

Disturbed by what it perceives to be increasingly ominous Israeli stubbornness over Middle East peace negotiations, the Carter Administration last week fired a diplomatic warning shot across the bow of new Premier Menachem Begin. The shot was a carefully prepared, ten-paragraph statement that was pointedly cleared by the White House and issued just three weeks before the Premier's arrival in Washington for his first meeting with President Carter. The message, read by State Department Spokesman Hodding Carter III at a news briefing, was that "negotiations must start without any preconditions" from any side. "This means," it went on, that "no territories, including the West Bank, are automatically excluded from the items to be negotiated." The statement also insisted that the U.S. was "not asking for any one-sided concessions."

Since Begin's upset election two months ago, Washington has become increasingly alarmed over his intransigent views. Begin has said that he sees "no condition" under which Israel would withdraw to its 1967 borders, especially from the West Bank, or accept a Palestinian state involving the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Moshe Dayan, hero of the Six-Day War and now Begin's Foreign Minister, last week flatly rejected what he called "partition" of the West Bank. Begin insists that the West Bank is negotiable, but his Likud political faction has been more amenable to Israeli settlements on that occupied Arab territory than the previous government.

Verbal Trickery. In its tough stand, the White House wanted to burst whatever illusions Begin might harbor about the U.S. position. To achieve that, of course, the statement need not have been public. But the Administration also wanted to preserve its role as mediator by emphasizing the distance between its view of the shape of a possible settlement and Jerusalem's. Moreover, Begin's line is now being vocally defended by many U.S. Jews, which is causing growing friction between the White House and the American Jewish community. Thus the State Department broadside was also intended as a reply to a speech by New York Republican Senator Jacob Javits, who is regarded as something of a spokesman for that community. Javits complained about "'imbalance in what Israelis and Arabs are being asked to do" by Carter. In demanding an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, said Javits, Carter takes away "virtually the totality of Israel's bargaining power."

The Israelis angrily rejected the State Department pronouncement. In an editorial headlined "Washington Wobbles," the Jerusalem Post blasted it as "verbal trickery designed to cover up the fact that the U.S. has resigned itself to the Arabs' refusal to make real peace with Israel." Privately, Israeli diplomats pressed the view that if negotiations broke down, the blame would not be Jerusalem's but Washington's. They charged Carter with "amateurism" in Middle East policy, on two counts: 1) he made the Palestinian issue so prominent in his various pronouncements, at the very moment that the P.L.O.'s fortunes were ebbing, that he overly aroused Arab expectations, and 2) he pushed Saudi Arabia into a public role in bringing about a settlement, thus diminishing its ability to maneuver behind the scenes and moderate the Arab extremists. Israelis feel that too many public statements have reduced everybody's flexibility and heightened the chances of war should negotiations fail.

Begin's strategy, Israeli diplomats say, will be to tell Carter that he would have been wiser to forget about Geneva and to try something along the lines of the step-by-step of the Kissinger era --dressed up in some new slogan, like "achieving peace in stages" or "a solution for coexistence." Carter and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance have been startled at the Israeli resistance to the President's hopes for reconvening the Geneva negotiations this year. Top Administration officials privately concede that the Geneva timetable is slipping --some now point to talks beginning next spring. The basic Israeli argument, as one Begin aide puts it, will be that "it makes no sense to try to solve the Middle East dilemma by starting with the most difficult problem"--that is, an agreement on the Palestinian problem.

Some moderates in Begin's own Likud coalition fault Washington mainly for misunderstanding the 63-year-old onetime independence fighter. Says a longtime associate: "Driven to despair, to a feeling that Israel is alone, Begin will become rigid." Currently he is backed at home not only by the Likud but also by his Labor opponents. Former Premier Yitzhak Rabin called the Washington statement an "unprecedented lack of courtesy" to Begin and said it contradicted the U.S. view that he had been given by Carter last spring.

Careful Letter. By week's end, everybody seemed ready to cool down somewhat. In Washington, nine Senators, including Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Sparkman, Majority Leader Robert Byrd and Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey, wrote a careful letter of "support" to Carter, which nevertheless reminded him of the U.S. commitment to Israel's security and endorsed the idea of a nonimposed settlement. The State Department message, insisted Assistant Secretary Alfred Atherton, was "certainly not intended as a threat of any sort" to Israel. At his press conference Carter declared a Washington moratorium on any "additional comments on specifics" about the Middle East until Begin's visit, adding a promise that the Israeli Premier would be received warmly. Begin himself denied that he was setting any preconditions for future negotiations. He told a group of Israeli industrialists in Tel Aviv that "from this bad, perhaps, good will blossom," and ordered his ministers to keep their doubts about the Carter peace strategy to themselves.

After all the squabbling, the fact remains that the Carter Administration has made clear its impatience with Jerusalem as well as its conviction that, in return for peace. Israel must withdraw from virtually all conquered territories and accept some kind of home for the Palestinians. That leaves a lot to be negotiated, including what sort of peace and when, but the basic U.S. position seems sound and inevitable.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.