BACKGROUND Renewed Life Israel hopes the Gulf war — and the PLO's support for Saddam — will make the West more receptive to Yitzhak Shamir's proposals for ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. HELEN DAVIS Foreign Correspondent O fficials in Jerusalem are cautiously op- timistic that the international community — appalled at the Palestine Liberation Organization's endorsement of Saddam Hussein — may now give more serious consideration to Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir's formula for settl- ing the Arab-Israeli dispute. The Shamir government has consistently opposed Arab demands for multilateral negotiations within the framework of an international peace con- ference under the auspices of the United Nations. Such a "grandstand" forum, the prime minister believes, would be both hostile and coercive, ultimately imposing a set- tlement that would be un- favorable to Israel and leave it militarily vulnerable. Instead, Jerusalem has proposed direct, bilateral negotiations with each of its neighbors, perhaps brokered by the United States and along the lines of the talks that led to the 1979 Egyp- tian-Israeli peace treaty. The Likud government is also opposed to giving up ultimate control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a move that would leave Israel just nine miles wide at its most heavily populated point around the Tel Aviv area. The reason for this in- sistence has been underlined by the Gulf crisis and has led a number of "dovish" Israelis, including Asher Susser, head of the Tel Aviv University Center for Mid- dle East Studies, to reap- praise their own personal positions. Prof. Susser, who had favored a wholesale Israeli withdrawal from the ter- ritories at almost any price, now says that had Israel ex- ecuted such a move, "the Iraqi army would now be sit- ting on the outskirts of Tel Aviv." Even the opposition Labor Party, which favors trading land for peace, insists on re- taining much of the strategic high ground in the ter- ritories, without which, they also say, Israel's heartland would be dangerously vulnerable. Israel insists that a resolu- tion of the Palestinian issue can only be concluded within the framework of a broader settlement with its Arab neighbors. This plan calls for local elections among the Pales- tinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that are intended to produce "authentic" Palestinian leaders with whom the Israelis could negotiate a far-reaching autonomy ar- rangement. Such a formula falls short of complete Palestinian in- dependence —Israel would insist on maintaining con- trol over security and for- eign affairs — but it would Israel appears to have handled the Gulf War just right — while the PLO has handled it absolutely wrong. allow the Palestinians a large measure of authority over their daily lives. But the greatest sticking point in this plan has been Israel's absolute refusal to deal with the PLO, a posi- tion that led to Jerusalem's international isolation as the European Community and then the U.S. estab- lished official contacts with the organization. The Gulf war, however, has reversed this trend. Israel has won unstinting — and unexpected — praise for its restraint in the face of Iraqi Scud missiles from Western leaders who feared that an early Israeli in- volvement in the Persian Gulf conflict would have unravelled the symbolically important Arab component of the allied military coali- tion. Already, these hard- earned diplomatic points have been converted into military, medical and finan- cial aid packages for the Jewish state. Moreover, just when Israel appeared to be doing every- thing right, PLO chairman Yassir Arafat appeared to have made a disastrous miscalculation by throwing his support behind Saddam. From the Gulf to Jordan and the Maghreb states of North Africa, Palestinian masses followed Arafat's lead and proclaimed their solidarity with the Iraqi dic- tator. In the occupied ter- ritories they climbed to the rooftops of their homes to cheer the Iraqi missiles. But now that Saddam has dropped the Palestinian cause from his wish list in favor of his own survival, the PLO and the Palestinian people have, once again, been hung out to dry by one of their own. "How many Arab leaders have gone to war in the name of the Palestinians?" said a shopkeeper in East Jerusalem. "And what do we see for it? Nothing, nothing. This has taught us that we can rely only on ourselves. It is a lesson we should have learned long ago." Having hitched their fate to the now-fading Iraqi star, the PLO and the Palestin- ians are likely to emerge as the major losers — after Iraq itself — from the Gulf con- flict. Arafat's actions during the Gulf crisis have caused his credibility to be questioned by even his most ardent champions in Europe, who find it difficult to reconcile his endorsement of Iraq with his own stated opposition to "the acquisition of territory by force." Already, Germany and the Netherlands have declared that Arafat has disqualified himself from any future peace process. Britain, too, has conspicuously dropped its long-standing demand that the PLO have a seat at the negotiating table. Artwork from the L. Angeles Times by Catherine Kanner. Copyright 1989, Catherine Kanner. Distributed by Los Angel. Times Syndicate. Israeli officials are not hanging out the victory bun- ting yet, but they do sense a growing international sym- pathy for their predicament. "We've been the world's punching bag for 10 years," said one Foreign Ministry of- ficial last week. "It's nice to be stroked again." Israeli officials are hoping the West will find the cur- rent painful lesson in Middle East realpolitik to be in- structive; that the experi- ence will produce a greater appreciation of the risks fac- ing Israel in an unstable and hostile region. "This is not just a morality play we're involved in," said one senior Israeli official. "We're talking about our survival, our very exis- tence." The situation, of course, may change radically yet again before the dust settles in the Gulf conflict. But for now, Jerusalem believes there may be renewed inter- est in the widely ridiculed Shamir plan, enunciated in May 1989, for resolving the ongoing Arab-Israeli and Pa- lestinian conflicts in a way that is acceptable to Israel — and without any reference to the PLO. Jerusalem is hoping that many who once scorned the Israeli offer will now regard it as a good place to start after all.EI THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 29