TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111191/1111000.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9KB | 176 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 54

MIDDLE EAST

Finally Face to Face


Hostile exchanges open the Arab-Israeli peace conference, but
the rat-a-tat is sound bites and speeches, not guns

By GEORGE J. CHURCH -- Reported by Lisa Beyer, Dean Fischer and
J.F.O. McAllister/Madrid


    Outside the conference hall there were a few grudging
handshakes among advisers, but also shouted epithets like
"terrorist!" and "murderer!" In formal sessions Arab,
Palestinian and Israeli delegates would rarely even look one
another in the eye as they denounced each other and laid their
cases before the world, but nobody walked out. At the end of
three days it was uncertain, in the most literal sense, where
the talks were going: the delegates concluded the opening phase
by quarreling bitterly about whether they should continue
meeting in Madrid or move to some different venue.

    This is a peace conference?

    Absolutely, and already one for the history books. No
amount of confrontational rhetoric could obscure the simple fact
that Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs, sworn blood
enemies for more than four decades, were sitting around a table,
talking. The speechmaking in the tapestry-hung Hall of Columns
of the Royal Palace in Madrid that opened the Middle East peace
conference was, like a wedding or a baptism, a solemn rite
symbolizing a new beginning. Come what may, the Mideast crisis,
perhaps the longest-running and most envenomed in the world, had
passed the point where the antagonists would not even talk.

    Which is not to say that negotiations will succeed. The
participants were talking to the U.S., the world, their own
constituents, far more than to each other. If the conference
started out about as well as could be expected, that is in part
because everyone involved has learned to expect little.
President Bush warned that no agreement could be foreseen in "a
day or a week or a month or even a year." Meanwhile there would
be snags, deadlocks, perhaps even temporary breakdowns.

    So it was not surprising that both the Israelis and their
adversaries began with statements that largely restated old
grudges. Substantive discussions will come later -- maybe; the
opening was devoted to public relations posturing and symbolism.
The Arabs and Israelis were there only because Bush and U.S.
Secretary of State James Baker had seen to it that they could
not afford to be absent. Boycotting the talks would have given
the boycotters a black eye in world opinion. Attending allowed
them to play to the biggest audience ever.

    Rival spin doctors advised more than 5,000 journalists how
every word and gesture ought to be interpreted. Every part of
the arrangements was calculated to make, or avoid, some
symbolic point: no flags were allowed at the negotiating table,
because the Israelis would not sit in the same room with a
Palestine Liberation Organization banner.

    On the outside chance the peace talks do break up, it will
probably be over a symbolic point. Last week's opening was
supposed to be followed on Sunday by bilateral negotiations in
Madrid between Israel and each of three enemies: Syria, a
Palestinian-Jordanian delegation and Lebanon. But the Israelis
demanded that the talks be moved to the Middle East. By bringing
Arab negotiators to Jerusalem, and then sending its own
diplomats to Arab capitals, Israel hopes to achieve undeniable
acknowledgment that its neighbors recognize it in fact, if not
officially, as a genuine nation. For exactly that reason, the
Arabs are resisting. A possible compromise discussed at week's
end was to move the talks to another European city, Cairo or
Washington.

    The main participants played their hands with varying
degrees of skill and clumsiness last week:

    -- THE U.S. scored a considerable victory by getting the
talks started at all, dramatizing its unchallenged status as the
world's sole remaining superpower. Bush did not need to make
that point; Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev did it for him.
The Soviet Union -- "a country that exists only outside its
borders," in the cruel summation of an American official -- is
nominally co-chairman of the conference, and its participation
enabled some Arabs to claim that they were not just knuckling
under to the U.S. But Gorbachev made it clear that Moscow would
now fade into the background and pretty much go along with
whatever the U.S. wants.

    The delicate U.S. task is to keep the talks moving without
getting trapped into so direct a role that it would seem to be
arm-twisting one side or the other. Bush and Baker tiptoed
through that minefield adroitly enough last week. The President
reassured a wary Israeli delegation by speaking of "territorial
compromise" instead of "land for peace," a formula that Israelis
loathe. He also backed the Israeli view that the conference
should lead not just to nonbelligerency but to "real peace."
Explained Bush: "I mean treaties. Security. Diplomatic
relations. Economic relations. Trade. Investment. Cultural
exchange. Even tourism." At the same time, he responded to an
Arab concern by calling for everyone to "avoid unilateral acts"
that might "prejudice" the peace process. Translation: Israel,
stop building those settlements in the occupied territories.

    The U.S. went home praying that its strategy of putting
the volatile elements together in a room would in time produce
enough chemical heat to generate compromise -- but not enough
to cause an explosion. Baker closed the round by sharply chiding
delegates for failing to look to the future, but judging when
and how to step in to bridge gaps will be the real test of the
Administration's success.

    -- ISRAEL bowed to American decisions that elevated the
Palestinians to near equal status, giving the Jordanian-
Palestinian delegation two of everything: two conference rooms,
two briefings, even two speeches at the sessions. Those
concessions allowed Israel to soften its image of intransigence.

    Then Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir blew it, big.
He has always vowed never to give up an inch of territory, and
he did not change that stance; he devoted half of his 34-minute
speech to a recitation of the oppression of Jews through
centuries and indeed millenniums. There was little in his speech
to suggest a willingness to compromise, and he followed up on
Friday with a bitter blast at Syria's brutality and tyranny. But
Shamir was playing less to world opinion than expressing deep
convictions that also work for him politically back home. He had
appeased Israeli peaceniks by attending the conference while
reassuring his hard-line supporters that he remains unbending
on issues that count.

    -- SYRIA was quite as intransigent. Foreign Minister
Farouk al-Sharaa told the conference that Israel must give up
"every inch" of the lands conquered in 1967. The next day he
directed a ferocious personal diatribe at Shamir. The Syrians
came across as bellicose tough guys who seemed to have no idea
how to play to a worldwide audience -- and maybe didn't care.
They only had to please an audience of one: Hafez Assad.

    -- THE PALESTINIANS were big winners. Instead of the
unshaven face of Yasser Arafat, they presented an image of
intelligence, professionalism and sensitivity. They sounded the
most conciliatory notes and made the first substantive
concession, explicitly saying they will now accept the limited
self-rule they spurned when it was offered as part of the Camp
David agreement.

    Haidar Abdul-Shafi, head of the Palestinian delegation,
easily trumped Shamir. Though the substance of his talk was in
many ways just as unyielding, its tone was mild, not
complaining or self-righteous. He too was playing a public
relations game, appealing to the Israeli peace movement and
worldwide sympathizers.

    More than public relations is involved in making peace, of
course. The differences are real, the anxieties and fears -- and
ancient hostility -- genuine. But paradoxically, p.r. may offer
some hope. If both sides figured that they could not afford to
stay away from this conference, they might calculate that they
also cannot afford to let it break down, and thus they might be
drawn to offer concessions -- minimal and grudging, to be sure
-- to keep it going. Maybe not. But if in the Middle East it is
always wise to prepare for the worst, it is equally necessary to
expect the unexpected.