But last week the Baker plan got somewhere. Syrian President Hafez Assad unconditionally accepted a compromise formula for Mideast peace talks. Assad has been an ardent Arab rejectionist, and his decision makes it easier for the Jordanians and Palestinians to sign on, as the Egyptians and gulf states have already done. Egypt and Saudi Arabia quickly followed Assad’s announcement by offering to suspend the Arab boycott against Israel if Israel would suspend building settlements in the Occupied Territories. The pressure now is on Israel-which initially rejected the Baker plan-to reverse course and agree to come to the table. But the heat is also on George Bush. Only the full power of the White House can make Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir agree to peace talks that could cost Israel the territory it shed so much blood for.
Bush has much to gain by bringing Shamir on board. Success would enhance the president’s stature among Arabs and boost the prospects for his “new world order” everywhere. Skeptics at home might stop asking whether the gulf war was worth it. But persuading the Israelis won’t be easy. The task is complicated by bad blood between Jerusalem and the Bush White House. “In his darker moments, Shamir sees the world inhabited by Jews and Poles,” said an American friend of Israel, “and he sees Bush and Baker as Poles.”
Shamir is so secretive, the joke in Jerusalem goes, that he doesn’t even tell himself what he’s thinking. “No one knows if Shamir is looking for political cover to say yes, or political cover to say no,” says an Israeli diplomat. “Your president must find a way to give him the first, but deny him the second.” Because Shamir doesn’t want to appear to be the only obstacle to peace, U.S. officials doubt that he’ll reject a Bush entreaty outright. Rather, like a base-line-hugging tennis player trying to wait out his opponent, Shamir is likely to string Bush along, seeking assurances and clarifications.
Bush’s approach will be what one adviser calls “tough love.” Bush has to reassure Shamir that he didn’t give any backroom guarantees to Assad. He must also promise Shamir that Washington and Moscow, the cosponsors of the conference, won’t let the process be kidnapped by the United Nations (which Israel distrusts), won’t let the Palestine Liberation Organization come to the table and won’t stampede Israel into hastily surrendering land to the Palestinians. At the same time Bush has to let Shamir know that intransigence will cost him. “We have to isolate him and make him sweat,” says one senior U.S. official.
The “tough love” approach may work. Shamir, eager to maintain his relationship with Washington, may calculate that agreeing to talk commits Israel to nothing. He may even see an opportunity to ease the Palestinian intifada while postponing indefinitely any final settlement that requires Israel to surrender land. But isolating Shamir could also make him more intransigent. “Israelis are like an egg,” says Avraham Burg, a Labor Party dove. “The more you boil us, the harder we become.”
If Shamir dithers too long, one option is to threaten to block American aid. In September Israel will seek a $10 billion line of credit from Congress to build housing for Soviet Jewish immigrants. But Bush officials say Israel has the Hill so well wired that the president would probably lose any bid to deny much aid. And if push came to shove, Israel would choose its security interests over housing subsidies.
A more likely last resort is for Bush simply to call Shamir one day and tell him that Washington and Moscow are planning to invite all the parties to a peace conference. If Shamir still doesn’t agree, says the Brookings Institution’s William Quandt, “then Bush and Gorbachev have to go through with it’!-in the hope that public pressure in Israel will force Shamir to show up. The move has its risks. If Shamir said no, Bush would look weak. If Shamir said yes, his far-right coalition partners might walk-forcing new elections that would squander the peace momentum. And Bush’s move might anger Israel’s American supporters on the eve of his 1992 campaign.
The Mideast peace process designed by Baker can’t possibly produce a quick settlement to the territorial disputes between Israel and its Arab and Palestinian neighbors. Nor can it cure the age old hatred between Arabs and Jews. The talks would be more like the coldwar arms-control negotiations between Washington and Moscow, which built security in tiny steps while reducing the chance that the two nations would go to war. Now the two superpowers are expected to play referee between Israel and the Arabs. “That is very important for peace,” said Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Sharaa. If Bush persuades Shamir to join the Arabs at the negotiating table, America’s job will have just begun.
