a
•
4
Rabin
Starts Off
With A
Bang
Israel's new prime
minister took
office with a host of
high-profile gestures,
but watch out
for those unsettled
details.
INA FRIEDMAN
Israel Correspondent
erusalem— Yitzhak Ra-
bin's opening week as
Israel's prime minister
was certainly dramatic.
In short order, he was
descended upon by Sec-
retary of State James
Baker, hosted by Egyptian Pres-
ident Hosni Mubarak, invited to
see President Bush to work out
terms for receiving the $10 bil-
lion in loan guarantees, invited
to Germany to discuss the possi-
bility of receiving further guar-
antees, and treated to a great
outpouring of support before he
had time to do anything to earn
it.
It was as though the world
was so relieved to be rid of the
rigid regime of "Stonewall
Sham& that Mr. Rabin was em-
braced with alacrity just for
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"being there."
Still, there was tangible sense
of movement, and a feeling that
perhaps now Israel can truly
achieve a peaceful end to its long-
standing conflicts.
But behind the photo-oppor-
tunity smiles, the rhetoric of the
Baker visit remained muted, cau-
tious, and stiff. One source even
described the atmosphere of the
talks in Jerusalem as "tense and
tough."
There was an odd undercur-
rent in Cairo, too. As the model
host, Mr. Mubarak chided re-
porters pressing for some sign of
a breakthrough by reminding
them that Mr. Rabin had been in
office barely a week. Yet the ef-
fect of the gesture was to place
the onus of any turnabout on Is-
rael alone.
What's more, President
Mubarak's less-than-elegant re-
jection of Prime Minister Rabin's
invitation for a reciprocal visit
dampened the prospects of a
quick warm-up in trade, tourism,
and other aspects of Egyptian-Is-
raeli relations. Indeed, less than
a week after Mr. Rabin's visit, a
high-level source in the Egyptian
Foreign Ministry linked further
diplomatic thawing to a "clear
Israeli stand on the principles
of land for peace and the legiti-
mate rights of the Palestinian
people and to serious progress in
the bilateral talks."
After Secretary Baker's de-
parture, there was a morning-af-
ter sense regarding his visit as
well.
To the degree that the secre-
tary's purpose was to jump-start
the peace process, he certainly
succeeded. Israel and its four
Arab negotiating partners all ex-
pressed their willingness to re-
sume bilateral negotiations in
Washington next month.
Yet on the level of confidence-
building measures, the accom-
plishments of the visit appear to
be mixed and modest. The Pales-
tinians, for example, will finally
get Israel engaged in talks on the
constitution of self-rule in the oc-
cupied territories.
But Mr. Rabin's government
is determined to keep Palestini-
an expectations — if not their as-
pirations — firmly in check. Israel
will not permit them to hold elec-
tions for a legislative assembly.
Neither will it agree to a change
in the makeup of their delegation
to the peace talks to bring in
Palestinians from E a st
Jerusalem, namely, Feisal al-
Husseini; the real head of the del-
egation in everything but official
title.
If anything, Mr. Rabin's stand
on the inclusion of an East
Jerusalemite in the negotiations
seems to have hardened. He has
expressed a willingness to sit
down with representatives from
the Palestinian diaspora at the
multilateral talks but draws the
line at accepting an East Jeru-
salemite in that context as well.
The Palestinians are disgrun-
tled, of course. They have tried
to argue that the issue at stake
is not Jerusalem but their right
to choose their own representa-
tives. Yet they are hardly likely
to go to the barricades over the
issue just when a chance for
progress on substantive matters
may finally be at hand.
Mr. Baker was less successful
in breaking the Syrian log jam
and is said to have left the region
frustrated by President Hafez el-
Assad's refusal to accept the prin-
ciple of a staged settlement on
the Golan Heights. Mr. Assad is
also sticking by his refusal to par-
ticipate in the multilateral talks
until satisfactory progress is
made in the bilaterals.
The greatest progress on the
Syrian issue was actually made
with Mr. Rabin, who was on
record as favoring the postpone-
ment of a settlement with Dam-
ascus until Palestinian autonomy
was in place. Now he has been
prevailed upon to negotiate on
both fronts simultaneously.
Just what the Israelis and Syr-
ians will talk about when they
next meet remains unclear, since
the positions of the two sides
haven't changed at all. Israel still
wants an understanding that the
point of the talks is to achieve a
full-fledged peace settlement.
Syria still insists that Jerusalem
must first endorse the principle
of a full withdrawal. Moreover,
the Syrian threat to block the
constitution of self-rule for the
Palestinians pending headway
in their own talks with Israel re-
mains firmly in force.
Oddly enough, considering the
week's broader cast of characters
and gamut of issues involved,
some of thefanciest footwork was
exhibited in the efforts to patch
up American-Israeli relations
and restore them to a pre- E'
Sharnirian level of cordiality.
Here the key instrument is the
$10 billion in loan guarantees —
that the Israeli government is
as eager to receive as the Bush
administration is now (in light of
the president's grim showing in
the polls) eager to provide.
Yet for the first time in quite
a while, both sides find them-
selves concerned with an almost
forgotten element in their rela-
tionship: appearances.
Having made a total freeze on
settlement activity the condition
for granting the guarantees to
the Shamir government, it would
be unseemly for Washington to
lift that stricture now for sake of
partisan political gain. Mr. Ra-
bin has moved in the "right di-
rection," Washington noted, by
having his declaration of a par- o
tial freeze on the construction of
housing and roads in the territo-
ries.
Yet he, too, is sensitive about
his image and has had his min-
isters stress that the freeze was
prompted by purely economic
motives — a reordering of Israel's
domestic priorities — not by any :-
desire to appease the U.S.
The word in Jerusalem is that c'--1
Baker and Rabin: A meeting to jump-start the peace process.