Middle East When Adversaries Meet

By William E. Smith

"There is no shame in discussing things with one's enemies." So said Morocco's King Hassan II three months ago. Last week he lived up to those words by meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The talks in the Moroccan resort of Ifrane produced little except what one participant described as a promise to "remain in contact." But the fact that the meeting was held at all merits at least a mention in the tortured history of Israel's relations with the Arab world.

Nearly nine years have passed since the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his famous trip to Jerusalem, a moment of high drama that led to a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. At least one other Arab ruler, King Hussein of Jordan, is believed to have held secret talks over the years with high- ranking Israeli officials. But not until last week did a second Arab leader acknowledge publicly that he had met face to face with a head of the Jewish state.

By opening a dialogue with Israel, Hassan won the praise of the Reagan Administration. He may also have prevented a cutback in the $140 million in aid that Morocco receives from the U.S. Congressional leaders had been unhappy with Hassan ever since he signed a largely meaningless "treaty of union" with Libya in August 1984.

At the same time, however, Hassan enraged the more radical Arab states. Syria broke off diplomatic relations. In West Beirut, 2,000 members of Hizballah, a militant Shi'ite Muslim faction, stormed the Moroccan embassy, routed its staff and caused extensive damage.

The Hassan-Peres meeting started to take shape months ago, after the King dropped hints that he was ready to meet with Peres to see if the Israeli leader had any new peace proposals. Movement on general Arab-Israeli talks sputtered to a halt in February, when King Hussein's attempts to launch negotiations involving Israel, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization broke down. Peres entered into tentative contacts, relying on emissaries like Moroccan-born Rafael Edri, chairman of the Labor Party faction in the Knesset.

Throughout, preparations for the Hassan-Peres meeting were kept secret. Last Monday afternoon Peres left Israel in an unmarked Israeli air force Boeing 707, accompanied only by a handful of aides, an Israeli television crew and two reporters. After landing in Fez, Peres was driven up winding mountain roads to the official guest house, close to the King's granite palace retreat 125 miles from Rabat and 4,400 ft. high in the Middle Atlas range. The Israeli party was finishing dinner when the King drove over in his own car and welcomed his guests. The two leaders greeted each other warmly and then conversed freely in French.

In the course of two days, the leaders and their aides met for a total of ten hours. The King told his countrymen later in a televised speech that he and Peres had failed to agree on a means of reviving the Middle East peace process. The Israeli leader, said Hassan, had flatly refused to meet two of the Arab world's fundamental demands: direct negotiations with the P.L.O. and withdrawal from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, which Israel has occupied since 1967. Said the King: "I told him, 'If that is how things are, then goodbye.'

Peres' aides tried to cast the talks in a better light, characterizing Hassan's comments as rhetoric designed strictly for Arab consumption. The Prime Minister maintained that the meeting was "an important step of the first degree." A primary objective of the trip, Peres continued, had been to "break the obstacle of shame" that the Arab world attaches to talking publicly with Israel.

Peres said he expected to meet again with the Moroccan monarch, but he may not have another opportunity. Under the existing agreement between his Labor Party and its partner in the national unity government, the right-wing Likud bloc, Peres is due to switch jobs in October with Yitzhak Shamir, the Likud leader who is now Foreign Minister. Thus Peres has little time left in which to make progress toward peace. But even if he fails in that broader goal, his trip to Ifrane is likely to prove popular with Israel's 600,000 Jews of Moroccan origin, the majority of whom traditionally vote for Likud.

It was evident from the joint Hassan-Peres communique that the two leaders remained far apart on critical issues. The statement emphasized Hassan's continuing commitment to the "Fez plan" as a blueprint for a peace agreement. That proposal, approved by Arab leaders in Fez in 1982, called for Israeli recognition of the P.L.O. and Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories in exchange for peace with the Arabs.

In the TV speech to his countrymen last week, Hassan reported that Peres still insisted that he would not recognize the P.L.O., leading the King to ask, "Then how will you settle the Palestinian problem without a valid partner with whom to discuss it?" When Peres replied, "I will find them in the West Bank, Syria and Jordan," Hassan told him, "But they will not negotiate with you on occupied territory. You must withdraw, and the P.L.O. is the necessary path toward it." Summarized Hassan: "Peres says he cannot evacuate, cannot talk about Jerusalem, refuses to recognize the P.L.O. or even to recognize that he must withdraw from the occupied territories."

Hassan made no attempt to hide his anger at those Arabs who had criticized him so savagely. "My roof is of steel," he boasted. "My house is made of stone." Syria, which called Hassan's initiative an act of "black treason," urged other Arab states to follow its lead in severing relations. Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi condemned the Hassan-Peres meeting but stopped short of a diplomatic break. The radical Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine accused Hassan of "high treason," while a spokesman for the notorious Palestinian leader Sabry Khalil Bana, popularly known as Abu Nidal, declared in Damascus that "the fate of all traitors is execution."

Arab moderates were more circumspect in their criticism, but concerned. A Jordanian newspaper called the talks "a painful stab in the chest of the Arab people." Alone in the Arab world, Egypt welcomed the meeting and urged Morocco to take an active role in the peace process. For President Hosni Mubarak, the talks meant that Egypt was no longer the only Arab nation that had opened a dialogue with Israel.

In Washington, Administration officials publicly praised the meeting but privately acknowledged that it had not accomplished very much. They had learned of the talks only at the last minute, when Hassan canceled a previously scheduled trip to Washington because of "fatigue." It was left to Peres to explain to the U.S. what the two leaders were up to. After that, President Reagan congratulated Hassan on his courage and offered to play host to the meeting in the U.S. The King said no, mainly because he did not want the Arab world to think that the talks were an American initiative.

Among its more marginal accomplishments, the Hassan-Peres meeting will give Vice President George Bush something positive to talk about during his current eleven-day trip to Israel, Jordan and Egypt. The Reagan Administration has had little to offer in the region diplomatically since the collapse of its Lebanon policy in 1984.

The main item on Bush's agenda will be an effort to improve the currently icy relations between Washington's closest allies in the region, Israel and Egypt. Toward that end, the U.S. has been working hard to settle the minor but exceedingly pesky dispute between the two countries over 250 acres of beachfront at Taba on the Red Sea. The disputed land is claimed by both countries on the basis of old survey maps. The latest plan has been for both sides to agree to submit the matter to an international arbitration panel, but the negotiators were still hung up last week over such questions as which maps should be given to the panel.

Though Israeli and Egyptian officials remained skeptical, the Administration was hopeful that an arbitration agreement might be in sight, possibly even in time for a signing ceremony in Bush's approving presence. Since any overall Middle East peace settlement is presently unattainable, political leaders and diplomats have to be satisfied for now with territorial agreements affecting scarcely more than a few hundred square yards of sand.

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Cairo and Roland Flamini/Jerusalem