America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

Yitzhak Shamir personifies intransigence. Wherever he goes, even if it is just to his office in Jerusalem, he is attended by low expectations for Arab- Israeli diplomacy. Still, his visit to Washington next week could advance the cause of peace if his encounters with the American President, Congress and the Jewish community reinforce the message he has been getting back home: something has to give on the occupied territories.

Shamir believes that Israel has a historic birthright to the lands it seized from Jordan in the 1967 War. After 21 years of Israeli rule and settlements in the West Bank, Palestinian Arabs still outnumber Jews there 16 to 1. For demographic reasons alone, it is hard to see how "Greater" Israel can remain a Jewish state and still be a true democracy. Nor is an Israel whose soldiers are ordered to break teenagers' bones the "light unto the nations" that its Zionist founders wanted.

Not incidentally, those founders -- David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann -- detested the Stern Gang that was implicated in terrorist bombings and assassinations. Shamir was one of its most notorious members. If Israel refuses to budge on the West Bank, it could, over time, become just another Levantine war zone pretending to be a country, in which latter-day equivalents of the Stern Gang battle with the most extremist of the Palestinians.

Like all other Administrations since 1967, the new leadership in Washington believes that Israel must at some point trade some of the West Bank for peace. The U.S. opened a dialogue with the P.L.O. last year because it hoped the organization was redefining the first two words of its name: the "Palestine" to be "liberated" is on the West Bank; it does not include pre-1967 Israel. As part of an eventual agreement, the U.S. is looking for reciprocal territorial concessions by Israel.

But forcing the issue now will do no good and could do harm by giving Shamir an excuse to dig in his heels. Likud has consolidated its strength in recent local elections, so it would be folly to peg American diplomacy to the more pliable policies of the weakened Labor Party.

Left to his own devices and instincts, Shamir would come to the U.S. with his jaw out, his dukes up and nothing in his pocket. The idea of a "Shamir initiative" sounds like a contradiction in terms. His preferred role is still that of defiant custodian of the status quo.

But the status quo is untenable. That is the message Shamir has been getting not just from the Palestinian stone throwers but from their antagonists in the Israeli army as well. It is a reminder of the enduring humanism and idealism of the Zionist state that many of its warriors hate breaking bones and say so to their Prime Minister.

So Shamir knows he needs to make a move, if only to escape the impression that he alone is standing still while events run beyond his control. He is expected to arrive with a proposal for elections among the Palestinians in the West Bank, followed by negotiations between those elected representatives and Israel. He wants to buy time by avoiding the question of whether Israeli withdrawal from -- and Arab sovereignty over -- the West Bank might someday be on the agenda of those negotiations. The Bush Administration will probably not insist that he bless the idea of territorial compromise in advance, but as his part of the bargain he had better not rule it out forever. That would probably be as much flexibility as the U.S. or the Arabs are likely to get out of this Israeli leader. But it might be enough to restart the diplomatic process; and perhaps that process will continue long enough for other Israeli statesmen to decide where it finally leads.