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Helen Davis
Foreign Correspondent
I
sraeli officials responded
with uncharacteristic an-
ger to a suggestion by
U.S. Assistant Secretary of
State John Kelly last week
that Israel was conducting
secret negotiations with the
PLO.
While Kelly told a congres-
sional hearing in Washington
that it would be an exaggera-
tion to say there had been of-
ficial dealings between Israel
and the PLO, he left the un-
mistakable impression that
such negotiations were, in
fact, underway.
Tough-talking Likud
wunderkind and Deputy
Foreign Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu categorically
denied that any talks, direct
or indirect, were in progress:
"We are not conducting, nor
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28
FRIDAY, JULY 21, 1989
Binyamin Netanyahu:
Categorical denial.
will we conduct, negotiations
with the PLO," he said in an
interview on Israel Radio.
Indeed, rejection of talks
with the PLO was the glue —
the overriding consensus —
that held the national unity
government together:
"Dissolving this glue," he
added, implicitly warning
Kelly to pull his head in, "is
certainly contrary to the very
existence of the government."
Spokesmen for Prime
Minister Yitzhak Shamir
("absolutely no contacts,
secret or otherwise") and for
Foreign Minister Moshe
Arens ("no contacts with the
PLO") were equally for-
thright and unequivocal.
It might be possible to
ascribe mischievous intent to
a PLO statement from Tunis
Yossi Beilin:
Categorical statesman.
that Israeli officials "have
been sending us ideas and
suggestions, some of them ad-
dressed directly to the PLO."
Such intent does not,
however, explain the
categorical statement by
Deputy Finance Minister
Yossi Beilin, a close aide to
Labor Party leader Shimon
Peres that "for the past two-
and-a- half months, there
have been clear and official
negotiations between the
Israeli government and the
PLO."
So where exactly does the
truth lie? As is so often the
case in Middle East, not least
Israeli, politics, the answer is
somewhere in between.
True, there is no hard
evidence to support the asser-
tion that Israel is holding of-
ficial, direct talks with the
PLO, but equally, there is no
doubt that indirect talks —
voluntary and involuntary —
are being conducted through
at least three primary
mediators:
• Egypt has been speaking
intensively to both sides for
the past seven years.
• America, Israel's closest
ally, embarked on an official
dialogue with the PLO last
December.
• Israeli leaders, notably
Prime Minister Shamir and
Defense Minister Yitzhak
Rabin, meet regularly with
Palestinians in the occupied
territories, who are then per-
mitted to travel abroad for
"consultations." In addition, a
host of other Western leaders,
who maintain close contact
with Jerusalem, are now
openly meeting with PLO
officials.
Last month, PLO leader
Yasser Arafat paid an official
visit to Paris, where he was
guest of President Francois
Mitterrand; and just last
week, British Foreign
Secretary Geoffrey Howe held
his first meeting with a PLO
official, Bassam Abu Sharif,
a senior Arafat aide who is
widely regarded as the author
and ideologue of the PLO's
diplomatic offensive.
The very act of talking to
both sides has cast leaders in
the role of mediators — con-
duits — between the PLO and
Israel.
Israeli leaders boldly pro-
claim that they do not want to
hear reports of United States
contacts with the PLO, a
point that was dramatically
underscored earlier this
month when Israel's Am-
bassador to Switzerland
Yehuda Horam, apparently
acting on instructions from
the Israeli Foreign Ministry,
undiplomatically walked out
when a United States envoy
attempted to relay the
Whether the Israeli
officials like it or
not, the expanding
contacts between
Western leaders
and senior
Palestinian
officials inevitably
involves the
Israelis in some
form of indirect
talks with the PLO.
substance of a recent U.S.-
PLO encounter.
But whether the Israeli of-
ficials like it or not, witting-
ly or unwittingly, the expan-
ding contacts between
Western leaders and senior
Palestinian officials in-
evitably involves the Israelis
in some form of indirect talks,
perhaps even negotiations,
with the PLO.
Nor is this mediation role
confined to the West. Ruma-
nian President Nicolae
Ceausescu played a critical
part in bringing Egypt and
Israel to the negotiating table
in the late Seventies and,
more recently, he has served
as a channel of communica-
tion between former Prime
Minister Menachem Begin
and, later, Shamir.
Indeed, there is a strong
precedent for indirect
negotiations between Israel
and the PLO. In 1981, long
before the start of the official
U.S.-PLO dialogue,
Washington, in co- ordination
with Saudi Arabia, brokered