BACKGROUND
Eban's
Complaint
Abba Eban, a practiced diplomat, is troubled.
The Mideast peace process is stymied and the
blame, he believes, lies with the U.S.
HELEN DAVIS
Special to The Jewish News
A
bba Eban sits behind a
neat desk and mas-
sages his famous jowls.
The pokey office he occupies
in the heart of the Knesset is
assigned to the chairman of
the powerful Foreign Affairs
and Defense Committee, and
a meeting in the adjoining
committee room has just
ended.
Military helicopters carry-
ing senior brass take off from
the Knesset helipad; scraps of
paper containing the notes
and doodles of committee
members are scrupulously
collected and consigned to
their fate; huge • maps are
rolled up and stored on racks.
The meeting is over, but Ab-
ba Eban, Israel's former
Foreign Minister who still
ranks among the most bril-
liant and articulate practi-
tioners of diplomacy, remains
profoundly troubled.
The peace process involving
Israel, Jordan and the Pales-
tinians has run aground, and
with the Prime Minister,
Shimon Peres, due to perform
a bizarre rotation waltz with
his hard-line coalition partner
in October, all signs point to
another prolonged impasse.
But the object of Abba
Eban's obvious distress is not
Peres, King Hussein of Jor-
dan or even the seemingly in-
tractable Yasser Arafat,
chairman of the Palestine
Liberation Organization.
Rather, it is the United
States. More specifically, its
Secretary of State, George
Shultz.
For without an active,
hands-on approach by the
United States in the person of
a top Administration official,
says Eban, it is both unrea-
42
Friday, August 1, 1986
sonable and unrealistic to ex-
pea the parties to defy gravi-
ty — to ignore their domestic
constraints and simply agree
to meet each other around the
negotiating table.
Peres attempted to inten-
sify America's involvement
when he went to Washington
earlier this year to invite
Shultz to visit the region. He
was followed by Ezer Weiz-
man, Minister Without Port-
folio in the national unity
government and an architect
of the Camp David agree-
ments. Then Eban himself
made the journey. All in vain.
"He wants success to be
guaranteed in advance," says
Abba Eban with an unchar-
acteristic disregard for
diplomatic propriety. "He
wants to come out to cele-
brate, not ,to mediate.
"We say, `If you come out,
there might be some success.'
He says, 'When there's suc-
cess, I might come out.' It's a
vicious circle."
Abba Eban is a veteran
Middle East negotiator and
he is convinced that it is im-
perative for the United States
to display a degree of "hien,
archical symbolism" in order
to get negotiations off the
ground. "But it doesn't seem
to be a priority for the United
States, he says. "I don't
understand their apprehen-
sion, I don't know what they
would lose."
The lack of any serious
American mediation efforts
now, he says, "is one of the
great obstacles to progress."
"I have no hesitation in
saying that if the Americans
had behaved as they are now
in 1973 [after the Yom Kippur
War] and in 1977 [after Egyp-
tian President Anwar Sadat's
visit to Jerusalem] we would
not have had disengagement
agreements, partial agree-
ments, the Camp David agree-
ments or the peace treaty
with Egypt.
"These were simply not fea-
sible without a very sophisti-
cated, assertive and assid-
uous mediation at a very high
level. The initial positions of
the parties over disengage-
ment following the Yom Kip-
pur War in 1973 were totally
disparate, but Kissinger went
26 times to Damascus, 21
times to Jerusalem and 32
times to Cairo. Nothing of the
kind is happening now.
"In 1977, the United States
President himself got in-
volved after Sadat's visit to
Jerusalem. He would go into
a room with a pencil and draft
things with rather junior peo-
ple from our side. They spent
13 days and nights at Camp
David, and when things went
wrong the President himself
rushed out to the Middle
East, sweating all over the
place and running around.
"Now, we • have a deputy
assistant under-secretary
from Washington who travels
6,000 miles every six weeks to
make a few communications
between the various capitals.
How crazy can you be?"
There are flashes of frustra-
tion, despair, even anger,
when the normally impertur-
bable Abba Eban discusses
the latest failed attempt at
peace. The emotions are un-
derstandable: as he sees it,
the parties will pay a high
price for failure.
"The consequences? First
of all, war. It's inevitable, just
a question of time. Second, a
growth in terrorism. As long
as the Palestinian problem is
not resolved, it is possible to
organize a coalition for
military action against Israel
— not because the Arabs
think they can win the war
but because wars shake
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The Middle East peace process has run agrourid and Abba Eban,
shown here standing before the Western Wall, is profoundly troubled.
things up."
And public opinion, he
warns, would not be on
Israel's side. "Such a war
would not be described as a
war for the destruction of
Israel, but rather for the
restoration of territory which
nobody believes should be a
part of Israel.
"After all," he asks, "who is
going to take -measures
against Syria for attempting
to get back the Golan
Heights, which everyone
regards as an international
boundary?
The frustration is height-
ened by the certain knowl-
edge that an accommodation
with Jordan and Palestinians
is attainable: "My own feel-
ing," he says, "is that there is
too much docility in accept-
ing the situation.
"The peace process broke
down over semantics, and if
some words were wrong, there
are other words. No other in-
ternational dispute has been
so overladen with symbolic
semantic considerations of
legitimacy, recognition and
what I call 'diplomacy by
incantation.
"You have to say certain
things and they have to say
certain things. It's so unique
that I wonder whether we're
not all going crazy. They have
to say '242' and we have to
say 'withdrawal.' They have to
say 'secure boundaries' and
we have to say 'Palestinian
people.' They have to say
`recognition' ...
"Whenever there was a suc-
cess in the past, it was
because there were no condi-
tions for the negotiations. In
1973, Kissinger drafted a let-
ter which simply said to us
and Egypt and Syria, 'Let's
go to Geneva and have a con-
ference. Yours sincerely.'
"We weren't asked to ac-
cept anything, they didn't
have to accept anything —
none of the regional powers
had to undergo any sort of
ideological torment. And we
did get results.
"And then in 1977-78 An-
war Sadat showed a complete
disregard for all these for-
mulas. I remember, he said to
me once in Cairo, 'Why do you
attach importance to 424?' —
he didn't even know the
numbers.
"But since then we've got
involved in a whole series of