ewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit
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The Mideast's
Latest 'Hostages'
Arafat and Rabin need each other
more than ever.
INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT
y
Saturday, December 25
9:00 p.m.
Jewish Community Center
Maple/Drake Building
7A- Dancing
Lite Buffet
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Dion Zaniewski
Mark Zaniewski
In Crosswinds Mall Orchard Lake & Lone Pine • 539-1181
itzhak Rabin was right
about one thing: Nothing
was sacred about the
deadline for beginning
Israel's withdrawal from the
Gaza Strip and Jericho. Meet-
ing in Cairo last week, the Is-
raeli prime minister and PLO
Chairman Yassir Arafat held a
two-and-a-half hour talk in a
eleventh-hour attempt to re-
solve their remaining differ-
ences — and failed.
Later, Mr. Rabin, all busi-
ness, told the press that they
had not bridged the gap on two
key issues: the scope of the
"Jericho area" to be granted self-
rule (Israel offered 27 square
kilometers, the PLO demand-
ed 360), and who will control
border crossings between Egypt
and the Gaza Strip and Jordan
and Jericho.
Mr. Arafat, looking stricken
as he addressed reporters in a
separate news conference, con-
firmed that the two men would
again meet in 10 days, adding
wanly that "the important thing
is that both sides are commit-
ted" to the peace accords and
"10 days is not a long time."
And so the war of nerves,
which reached new heights in
Israel and the territories as the
two leaders were preparing for
their conclave, continues. Then
again, so do the negotiations.
This combination of factors,
which took a new turn in Cairo
on, has deeper significance than
may initially meet the eye.
First of all, Mr. Arafat de-
parted sharply from the Pales-
tinian ploy of crying "deadlock"
and halting the negotiations
when the going gets rough. This
was a tactic employed repeat-
edly during 21 months of talks
in Washington and, in one vari-
ation or another, during the
Taba and Cairo talks since Oct.
13. Yet when the sense of stale-
mate seemed strongest, Mr.
Arafat decided to let the talks
continue on both overt and se-
cret planes.
Thus, the two leaders agreed
that the committee hammering
out economic arrangements be-
tween Israel and the au-
tonomous areas and the teams
working on transferring civil-
ian authority will continue to
meet. in Paris and El Arish, re-
spectively. No mention was
made of the security committee
that had been negotiating the
core issues in Cairo. And Mr.
Rabin said both sides would use
this period to "rethink."
Yet it seems clear that in ad-
dition to thinking, the two sides
will communicate on the stick-
ing points — through direct
channels and probably at the
ministerial level — during the
10-day interval.
Second, and far more in-
triguing, is the fact that now, at
least, all the proxies have
dropped out of the political-pok-
er game that's been going on for
the past two years, leaving Mr.
Arafat and Mr. Rabin to play
out their hands face-to-face and
alone. Two-thirds of their latest
session was a tete-a-tete in
which each exercised his skills
of bluff and feint, as well as
friendlier forms of disarmament
and persuasion.
The interesting result is that,
judging by their performances
If Mr. Rabin and Mr.
Arafat don't reach
agreement when
they reconvene,
they may find that
they've exhausted
their options.
after their talk, the prime min-
ister (who's been called many
things in his career, but never
"cunning') seemed more adept
at this game than the "wily"
PLO head.
In fact, Mr. Rabin had initi-
ated his gambit by first sending
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres
and then Building Minister
Benyamin Ben-Eliezer to treat
Mr. Arafat to a version of the
"good cop, bad cop" routine, so
by the time he reached Cairo he
had already been through one
mill. (And that's without men-
tioning his two meetings that
week with Secretary of State
Warren Christopher, who re-
jected his pleas to intervene in
the bilateral negotiations.)
There was a third reason
that Mr. Rabin gained the up-
per hand at the Cairo conclave.
It's a diplomatic axiom that na-