[Y]

3

peoples of Israel and Palestine, but all the peoples of the
Middle East. The other states of the area will make peace with
Israel, which will serve as a kind of high-tech center for the
area. At the end of the five year process set aside for
negotiations, genuine peace will come to the area not only in
the legal sense of the word but in its spiritual significance.

The mere fact that such prospects can even be enumerated,
marks the achievement of what has been celebrated.

But how realistic are such hopes? The Israeli-Palestinian
agreement has two parts: an interim agreement for five years
in which Israel withdraws from Gaza and Jericho and
establishes autonomy for the rest of the West Bank, and a
procedure for negotiating the final settlement. In the interim
agreement, Israel has traded some of its control over the West
Bank for time. It will retire from Gaza and Jericho and
abolish the military government over the rest of the territory

4

in return for a process certain to lead to a Palestinian
state. The PLO has agreed to leave Israel in control of the
settlements, of Jerusalem, of its military bases, and of the
roads of the West Bank, as well as of external security for
all the occupied territories (including Gaza) for a five-year
period, during which a permanent agreement is supposed to be
negotiated. Internal security will be in the hands of what the
agreement calls a "strong" police force recruited from
Palestinians inside as well as outside the West Bank, provided
the latter have Egyptian or Jordanian passports.

On balance, I favor these agreements. As all diplomatic
documents, they represent a compromise which must be compared
not with what each side would consider ideal, but with what
would exist in the absence of the agreement. This article will
deal with the pitfalls ahead, many of which would exist in the
absence of an agreement. The article is designed as a

XX

5

corrective to excessive euphoria, not as an attack on the
hopes it represents.

The most immediate issue is to understand what exactly has
been recognized, and who did the recognizing. Israel has
recognized the PLO but it seems to believe that it has not
recognized a Palestinian state and that it can choose the
representatives of the Palestinians with whom it is prepared
to deal. This is surely an illusion. After Arafat has been
received at the White House on an equal footing with Rabin and
elections are held in the occupied territories, a Palestinian
state is inevitable. Its leadership will emerge from the
electoral process foreseen in the interim agreement which is
supposed to take place within nine months. These and
subsequent elections will determine the leadership of the new
state. Israel will have no meaningful veto.

X

[Y]

6

A great deal depends, therefore, on what leadership will emerge from the process that has started, and this will answer the question of which Palestinians have recognized Israel. It is clearly not the Hamas or the Hetzbolla fundamentalists controlled by Iran, nor the alphabet soup of PLO factions (DLP, PFLP, PFLF, etc. - all based in Damascus) which condemn the agreement. Does Arafat then speak for the PLO or for a rump group of the PLO? Any political leader must rally his constituency. It therefore seems unlikely that he can endow the agreement with the almost mystical significance given to it by many Israelis. Even granting Arafat's sincerity, the pressures on him will make him an increasingly complicated, perhaps even irrelevant, partner in moving through the minefield of implementing this complex agreement and the deadlocks inevitable in negotiating the final arrangements.

X

[Y]

7

This most sweeping of Arab-Israeli arrangements so far
occurs at a moment of weakness for both sides. The PLO is
being squeezed. In the Gulf War it lost the financial support
of the moderate Gulf states and the military and intelligence
support of Iraq. Since the collapse of Communism, it has been
deprived of the support of most of its friends outside the
region. The growth of radical fundamentalism threatens it
within the Muslim world. The PLO in fact needed the deal in
order to survive, and its weakness was a reason for Israel to
proceed lest it be left only with fundamentalists as partners.
But this raises the question whether Arafat is strong enough
to undertake the cooperative approach needed for a permanent
agreement or whether, to secure his base, his incentive is
gradually to step up the pressure on Israel.

The mutual recognition is therefore far from symmetrical. Of
all the Arab adversaries of Israel, the Palestinians are among

8

the most attractive humanly, and those with the greatest
grievance. Egypt and Syria have insisted on their historic
borders - Egypt successfully, Syria, so far, inconclusively.

But once these are satisfied, they have no necessary incentive
to go beyond them except to show solidarity with Palestinians.

But even the most moderate Palestinians will find it difficult
to look across whatever the dividing line turns out to be at
the lights [?] of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv without feeling a
twinge of regret at the loss of what they are bound to
consider Palestinian territory. When they recognized Israel,
did the Palestinians mean that they have become genuinely
reconciled to its existence? Or was it with the same attitude
that France renounced Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871, only
to spend the next generation trying to get it back? Not even
the most moderate Palestinians are in a position to give a

[Y]

X

[Y]

9

truthful answer, if only because they cannot yet know what
they will feel when the final borders are drawn.

As for Israel, much of its body politic seems to be
psychologically drained. It yearns for an end to non-
recognition, to intifadas, and the sense of permanent danger.
It therefore has endowed the word "peace" with a quality for
which there is no historic warrant whatsoever. Recognition has
not in the past been an obstacle to war or even to conquest;
almost all wars in history have started between nations
legally at peace. In the Middle East, it is difficult, if not
impossible, to think of any conflict between states that has
finally ended in reconciliation on the basis of one agreement.
Most Israelis expect from peace an almost Biblical conversion
in which tensions disappear and they live in brotherhood with
their Arab neighbors. No single agreement can fulfil this
hope. Such a result can come - if at all - only at the end of

Y

10

a long historical process. The statements of too many leading
Israelis ignore this reality and thereby may be setting the
stage for a monumental let-down.

In any event, mutual recognition is not symmetrical. At the
latest after the West Bank elections in nine months' time, the
Israeli recognition of the Palestinian entity (and soon-to-be
state) will be irrevocable, as will be the Israeli withdrawal.
Israeli politicians who speak blithely of abrogating the
agreement or of recognizing the West Bank are deluding
themselves. The international isolation such acts would
produce would prove unsustainable. And even if Israel should
withdraw its recognition of a Palestinian entity, the rest of
the world would not follow. The Palestinians, on the other
hand, always have the option of at least breaking off talks
and thereby returning Israel to a status not so dissimilar
from non-recognition.

Q

[Y]

11

Thus the likely evolution is that Israel benefits more from
the beginning of the current peace process while the
Palestinian bargaining position is likely to improve with the
passage of time.

In the immediate future, Israel will gain considerable
benefits. It will be rid of the nearly half of the total Arab
population of the occupied territories which lives in Gaza. It
will be able to withdraw its forces from the populated areas
in the rest of the territories and thus reduce, perhaps even
eliminate, the impact of the intifada. Some cooperative
patterns between Israeli and Arab authorities on the West Bank
are sure to develop. Relations with several Arab countries
will improve, though I would expect full recognition to be
withheld pending agreement on an overall settlement.

12

The Palestinians' major achievement in the initial period resides in the de facto recognition of a Palestinian entity. This will totally alter the negotiating pattern after a while. The result will be that, in the interim period, the presence of Israeli settlements, military bases, and unrestricted use of roads is likely to be challenged, at first by the dissident elements of the Arab population but sooner or later by the established leaders if they want to retain public support. Israel is therefore unlikely to enjoy a five-year respite. Much more likely are attempts to harass the continuing Israeli presence, at least diplomatically, on what will increasingly be considered Arab soil by both the local population and, in a great part, the rest of the world.

A perhaps more serious challenge will come from within the Muslim world. Since 1948, every progress toward peace in the Middle East has been followed by an increase in terrorism as

13

dissident groups try to interrupt the process, either by
assassinating those who carry it forward, as happened to
Sadat, or by triggering Israeli retaliation in order to
destroy an atmosphere of cooperation. Some leading Israelis
seem to believe that Arafat and the police force he will be
permitted to organize will help keep the West Bank quiet.

Arafat certainly has an incentive to establish himself as a
responsible leader. But it is difficult to believe that he
will move from the tacit encouragement of terrorism to
cooperating with Israel against his own constituencies.

Indeed, the "strong" Palestinian police force envisioned in
the agreement could become a study in ambivalence. With what
energy will they act against acts to complicate the Israeli
presence? At what point do they become the problem rather than
the solution?

98

14

The most serious danger is that the dissident groups will be strong enough to try to create Lebanese-style conditions on the West Bank. The central authorities may not be able to prevent terrorism, either against moderate Arabs or against Israelis on the West Bank, or even inside Israel. If conditions become too chaotic, Israel may intervene or outside Arab forces may try to infiltrate the West bank, or both. This could then usher another Middle East war.

Thus, even in the interim period, there will be many unsolved, perhaps insoluble, problems requiring an extraordinary degree of cooperation between the two sides. While the role of economic development is often exaggerated, in this case rapid progress in that field is one of the few tools available to give the parties - and especially the Palestinians - a stake in an evolutionary approach. The

YAX

15

outside world should rally for a substantial assistance program, for which America has quite properly taken the lead.

In the euphoria of celebrating an agreement, one is easily tempted to believe that a true spirit of conciliation has descended on the parties. No one should exclude the possibility of conversion. With the best will in the world, the final reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis can not take place until the permanent settlement is concluded.

None of the key issues has been dealt with in the present agreement - not borders, not settlements, nor Jerusalem. In the short term, that is the strength of the agreement; in the long term, a peril.

Fitting two states into a territory fifty miles wide - the distance from the Mediterranean to the Jordan - would be difficult even if irredentism were not built into the situation. When I was involved in Middle East diplomacy, I

[Y]

[Y]

16

favored the Jericho-Gaza portion of the present arrangement, only in favor of Jordan rather than the PLO. And I was quite unhappy when Israel refused to consider it. Some years later, I had an occasion to drive from Jerusalem to Jericho. Though we had barely left, in less than thirty minutes we had already reached our destination. Outsiders looking at maps drawn to a comprehensible scale do not grasp how little land there is to work with and how precarious the situation is for all parties. Jerusalem carries similar emotional freight. And the settlements will be an even more complex issue.

Thus, the parties will soon find that the operation of the agreement is painful and that the movement toward a permanent settlement is likely to move through a series of deadlocks. It will become apparent that Israel's security does not permit it to return to the '67 borders while Arab dignity will prove

X

17

incompatible with the maintenance of all Israeli settlements.

And Jerusalem continues to be a holy city for both parties.

Israelis and Palestinians will need to realize that they are
now facing a new reality which they themselves have created.

Israel will no longer confront Arab nations negotiating on
behalf of a sometimes obstreperous ally and occasionally just
going through the motions of doing so. They now are dealing
with a Palestinian entity whose leader can no longer be
treated as a terrorist. His claims will therefore carry more
formal weight, and his capacity to generate political
pressures has been much enhanced.

The Palestinians are also more on their own. They have
negotiated the present framework without ever informing most
of their Arab partners. They are therefore in greater need of
generating their own incentives for a settlement. Whether all

YJ

[Y]

18

this leads to greater flexibility or greater tension depends
in part on the United States.

The role of the United States will be complex. Until now,
every Arab-Israeli agreement has been brokered by the United
States and many of the formulae leading to solutions were
designed in Washington. Arab negotiators were counting on
America to induce Israel to make concessions they did not have
the means to evoke. Israel went along (and sometimes
encouraged) such an American role to maintain support from its
principal friend.

On this occasion, the United States was on the sidelines,
apparently uninformed and not emerging until the final signing
ceremony. The reasons for the near exclusion of the United
States were the newness of the Clinton administration, the
slowness in developing an American position, and the parties'
lack of confidence in America's ability to maintain secrecy.

※

19

It is the second time that fear of American formalism has brought the Middle East parties together, for Sadat journeyed to Jerusalem in large part as an alternative to an American-sponsored general conference with its attendant rigidities. There is no magic in a day-to-day American role. Indeed, if America were to assume responsibility for breaking all deadlocks, it might perversely encourage these very deadlocks. The parties might strike intransigent poses for their domestic opposition and maneuver America into forcing them into doing what they deep down know to be necessary, and would eventually do on their own - as they have this time. America can be proud of a consistent policy carried through six administrations of both parties that now enables Arabs and Israelis to assume a greater responsibility for the nitty-gritty of negotiations.

In the future, America will have these principal tasks:

20

1) It must rally support for the economic development of the autonomous area. Most of these funds should come from the Arab world.

2) It should use its influence with other Arab countries to move rapidly to deal with Israel and to play a moderating role with the Palestinians. At a minimum, the Arab boycott of Israel should be lifted.

3) It should be available at times of deadlock without returning to its previous dominating role.

4) It should avoid permanent peacekeeping functions, especially in the West Bank. Before offering guarantees, we must know what we are guaranteeing and how to implement the promise.

In assessing these difficulties, it is important to understand how far all the parties have already come. What

CXY

["The PLO has been forced to accept the results of the elections in all the constituencies, including those which are not part of the PLO's control. The PLO must accept the results of the elections in all the constituencies, and the results of the elections must be final. The PLO must accept the results of the elections in all the constituencies, and the results of the elections must be

SEP-12-1993 16:29

FROM

TO

12124213934 P.11

8
can fulfil this hope, such a result can come - if at all -
only at the end of a long historical process. The statements
of too many leading Israelis ignore this reality and thereby
not set the stage for a monumental let-down.

In any event, the mutual recognition is not symmetrical. At
the latest after the West Bank elections in nine months' time,
the Israeli recognition of the Palestinian entity (and soon-
as will be the Israeli withdrawal
to-be state) will be irrevocable. Israeli politicians who
speak blithely of abrogating the agreement are deluding
themselves. The international isolation such an act would
produce would prove unsustainable. And even if Israel should
withdraw, its recognition of a Palestinian entity, the rest of
the world would not follow. The Palestinians, on the other
hand, always have the option of at least breaking off talks
and thereby returning Israel to a status not so dissimilar
from non-recognition. Thus the likely evolution is that Israel

SEP-12-1993 16:31 FROM

TO

12124213934 P.14

[Y]

11

atmosphere of cooperation. Both these tactics can be expected.

Some leading Israelis seem to believe that Arafat and the police force he will be permitted to organize will help keep the West Bank quiet. Arafat certainly has an incentive to establish himself as a responsible leader. But it is difficult to believe that he will move from the tacit encouragement of terrorism to cooperating with Israel against his own constituencies. Indeed, the "strong" Palestinian police force envisioned in the agreement could become a study in ambivalence. With what energy will they act against acts to reduce the Israeli presence? At what point do they become the problem rather than the solution?

SEP-12-1993 16:32

FROM

TO

12124213934 P.17

[Y]

14

most moderate Palestinians are in a position to give a
truthful answer, if only because they cannot yet know what
they will think when the ~~borders are finally drawn.~~
~~feel ~~final~~

With the best will in the world, true reconciliation ~~will be~~ an
~~take place~~
not be conceivable until the permanent settlement is
concluded. None of the key issues has been dealt with in the
present agreement, not borders of settlements for Jerusalem. In
~~of the agreements~~ a
the short term, that is the strength; in the long term, its
peril.

Fitting two states into a territory fifty miles wide - the
distance from the Mediterranean to the Jordan - would be
difficult even if irredentism were not built into the
situation. When I was involved in Middle East diplomacy, I
favored the Jericho-Gaza portion of the present arrangement,
only in favor of Jordan rather than the PLO. And I was quite
unhappy when Israel refused to consider it. Some years later,

SEP-12-1993 16:33 FROM

TO

12124213934 P.20

[Y]

16

sometimes obstreperous ally and occasionally just going through the motions of doing so. They now are dealing with a Palestinian entity whose leader ~~is no longer~~ treated as a terrorist, and ~~has been received at the White House.~~ His claims ~~will carry~~ ~~merit~~ Must therefore ~~be treated more formally~~ and his capacity to generate political pressures has been much enhanced.

The Palestinians are also more on their own. They have negotiated the present framework without ever informing most of their Arab partners. They are therefore in greater need of generating their own incentives for a settlement. Whether all this leads to greater flexibility or greater tension is an- depends

in part on the United States.

open issue...

1

2711 Words

Dr. Kissinger Newsweek Article 9/12/93

On the day the mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO was announced, I participated in a television discussion with a number of Americans who had participated in the Middle East negotiations over the past twenty years. We all agreed that we were witnessing a seminal event. Some of my colleagues compared it to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union, or the American opening to China.

I did not fully share the euphoria at the time for one principal reason. All the events cited by my colleagues started an evolution that was bound to be constructive; the sole issue remaining was the rate at which it would proceed and the exact nature of the final destination. The process

CJ

[Y]

2

which has started between Israel and the PLO has no such
certain outcome. It contains the germs of great possibilities;
it raises as well the prospects of vast difficulties. The time
for real celebration will have arrived when these are
overcome.

The opportunities are vast. One could imagine - and many
Israelis seem to expect it - that the agreement will usher in
a process of permanent reconciliation. For Palestinian and
Israeli forces to live together in a territory only fifty
miles wide from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, will
recognize that, if they cooperate, they can enhance the
quality of their peoples' lives while, in conflict, they
condemn themselves to permanent misery. They will therefore
settle the remaining issues, which happen to be the major one,
in the spirit of goodwill that has characterized recent days.
Israel and the new inevitable Palestinian state will live side

3

by side much as Holland and Belgium do and, in time, form a
kind of economic unit benefitting not only the people of
Israel and Palestine, but all the peoples of the Middle East.

At the end of the five year process set aside for
negotiations, genuine peace will come to the area not only in
the legal sense of the word but in the spiritual sense.

Every instinct makes one wish to affirm such prospects. The
mere fact that they can even be ______, marks the
achievement of what has been celebrated.

But how realistic are they? The essence of the Israeli-
Palestinian agreement is that Israel has traded some of its
control over the West Bank for time. It will retire from Gaza
and Jericho and abolish the military government over the rest
of the territory in return for a process certain to lead to a

68

4

Palestinian state. The PLO has agreed to leave Israel in control of the settlements, of Jerusalem, of its military base, and of the roads of the West Bank, as well as of external security for all the occupied territories (including Gaza) for a five-year period. During that time, a permanent agreement is supposed to be negotiated. Internal security will be in the hands of what the agreement calls a "strong" police force recruited from Palestinians inside as well as outside the West Bank, provided the latter have Egyptian or Jordanian passports.

A month ago, no one would have thought it possible that such an agreement could be negotiated - especially with the United States on the sidelines. But this week's celebrations should not blind us to the difficulties ahead.

The most immediate question is what exactly was recognized, and who did the recognizing. Israel has recognized the PLO but

[YJ]

5

it seems to believe that it has not recognized a Palestinian state and that it can choose the representatives of the Palestinians with whom it is prepared to deal. This is surely an illusion. After Arafat has been received at the White House - probably prematurely - a Palestinian state is inevitable.

Its leadership will emerge from the electoral process foreseen in the interim agreement which is supposed to begin within nine months. These and subsequent elections will determine the leadership of the new state. Israel will have no meaningful veto.

A great deal depends, therefore, on what leadership will emerge from the process that has started, and this will reflect the answer to the question of which Palestinians have recognized Israel. It is clearly not the Hamas or the Hetzbolla fundamentalists controlled by Iran. Nor the alphabet soup of PLO factions (DLP, PFLP, PFLF, etc.) - all based in

[Y]

6

Damascus - who have condemned the agreement. Does Arafat then speak for the PLO or for a rump group of the PLO? And if he wants to hold the PLO together, it will be difficult for him to afford his dissidents lest he become substantially isolated. Even granting his sincerity, the pressures on him will make him an increasingly complicated or irrelevant partner in moving through the minefield of implementing this complex agreement and the deadlocks inevitable in negotiating the final arrangements.

The irony is that this most sweeping of all arrangements occurs at a moment of weakness for both sides. The PLO is being squeezed. In the Gulf War it lost the financial support of the moderate Gulf states and the military and intelligence support of Iraq. Since the collapse of Communism, it has been deprived of the support of most of its friends outside the region. The growth of radical fundamentalism threatens it

[Y]

7

within the Muslim world. Both Israel and the PLO were under
the pressure that the PLO needed the deal in order to survive.
The issue is whether Arafat can rebuild his constituency by
cooperative conduct or whether, to secure his base, his
incentive is gradually to step up the pressure on Israel.

As for Israel, much of its body politic seems
psychologically drained. It yearns for an end to non-
recognition, intifadas, and constant danger. It therefore has
endowed the word "peace" with a quality for which there is no
historic warrant whatsoever. Most nations that were eventually
defeated had been recognized; almost all wars start between
nations legally at peace. It is difficult, if not impossible,
to think of a conflict between states that has been ended by
one agreement. Israel expects from peace an almost Biblical
transformation in which tensions disappear and Israelis live
in brotherhood with their Arab neighbors. No single agreement

98

8

can fulfil this hope; such a result can come - if at all -
only at the end of a long historical process. The statements
of too many leading Israelis ignore this reality and thereby
may set the stage for a monumental let-down.

In any event, the mutual recognition is not symmetrical. At
the latest after the West Bank elections in nine months' time,
the Israeli recognition of the Palestinian entity (and soon-
to-be state) will be irrevocable. Israeli politicians who
speak blithely of abrogating the agreement are deluding
themselves. The international isolation such an act would
produce would prove unsustainable. And even if Israel should
withdraw, its recognition of a Palestinian entity the rest of
the world would not follow. The Palestinians, on the other
hand, always have the option of at least breaking off talks
and thereby returning Israel to a status not so dissimilar
from non-recognition. Thus the likely evolution is that Israel

[Y]

9

gains more at the beginning of the process that has been
started while the Palestinian bargaining position is likely to
improve with the passage of time.

In the immediate future, Israel will gain considerable
benefits. It will be rid of the nearly half of the total Arab
population of the occupied territories which lives in Gaza. It
will be able to withdraw its forces from the populated areas
in the rest of the territories and thus reduce, perhaps even
eliminate, the impact of the intifada. Some cooperative
patterns between Israeli and Arab authorities on the West Bank
are sure to develop. Relations with several Arab countries
will improve, though I would expect that full recognition will
be withheld pending agreement on an overall settlement.

The Palestinians' major achievement in the initial period is
the de facto recognition of a Palestinian entity. This will
totally alter the negotiating pattern after a while.

10

Two problems are certain to arise. The first is that, in the interim period, the presence of Israeli settlements, military bases, and unrestricted use of roads is likely to be challenged at least by the dissident elements of the Arab population, which will have the sympathy of much of the remainder. Israel is therefore unlikely to enjoy a five-year respite. Much more likely is an attempt to harass the continuing Israeli presence on what will increasingly be considered Arab soil by both the local population and, in a great part, the rest of the world.

The second challenge to stability will arise from within the Arab world. Since 1948, every progress toward peace in the Middle East has been followed by an increase in terrorism as dissident groups try to interrupt the process, either by assassinating those who carry it forward, as happened to Sadat, or by triggering Israeli retaliation to destroy an

CYJ

[Y]

11

[Y]

12

Israelis on the West Bank, or even inside Israel. If conditions become too chaotic, Israel may intervene or outside Arab forces may try to infiltrate the West bank, or both. This could then be the start of another Middle East war.

Thus, even in the interim period, there will be many unsolved, perhaps insoluble, problems requiring an extraordinary degree of cooperation between the two sides. While the role of economic development is often exaggerated, in this case rapid progress is one of the few tools available to give the parties - and especially the Palestinians - a stake in an evolutionary approach. The outside world should rally for a substantial assistance program.

This is all the more important because, in the euphoria of celebrating an agreement, one is easily tempted to believe that a true spirit of conciliation has descended on the parties. No one should exclude the possibility of conversion.

[Y]

13

But there are two obstacles to this prospect. One is that, of all the Arab adversaries of Israel, the Palestinians are both the most attractive humanly and those with the greatest grievance. Egypt and Syria have insisted on their historic borders - Egypt successfully, Syria, so far, controversially.

But once these limits are reached, they have no necessary incentive to go beyond them - except Arab solidarity with Palestinians. But even the most moderate Palestinians will find it difficult to look across whatever the dividing line may be at the ______ of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv without feeling a twinge of regret at the loss of what they are bound to consider Palestinian territory. When they recognized Israel, did the Palestinians mean that they are genuinely reconciled to its existence? Or was it with the attitude with which France renounced Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871 - only to spend the next generation trying to get it back? Not even the

[Y]

14

most moderate Palestinians are in a position to give a
truthful answer, if only because they cannot yet know what
they will think when the borders are finally drawn.

With the best will in the world, true reconciliation will
not be conceivable until the permanent settlement is
concluded. None of the key issues has been dealt with in the
present agreement, not borders or settlements or Jerusalem. In
the short term, that is the strength; in the long term, its
peril.

15

I had an occasion to drive from Jerusalem to Jericho and we had barely left when, after less than thirty minutes, we had already reached our destination. Outsiders looking at maps drawn to a comprehensible scale do not grasp how little land there is to work with and how precarious the situation is for all parties. Jerusalem carries a similar emotional freight. And the settlements will be an even more complex issue.

In these circumstances, one wonders whether a more matter-of-fact approach to the signing ceremony might not have saved much disillusionment later. For the parties will soon find that the operation of the agreement is painful and that the movement toward a permanent settlement is likely to move through a series of deadlocks.

Both sides will need to realize that they are now facing a new reality which they themselves have created. Israel will no longer confront Arab nations negotiating on behalf of a

[Y]

16

sometimes obstreperous ally and occasionally just going
through the motions of doing so. They now are dealing with a
Palestinian entity whose leader is no longer treated as a
terrorist and has been received at the White House. His claims
must therefore be treated more formally and his capacity to
generate political pressures has been much enhanced.

The Palestinians are also more on their own. They have
negotiated the present framework without ever informing most
of their Arab partners. They are therefore in greater need of
generating their own incentives for a settlement. Whether all
this leads to greater flexibility or greater tension is an
open issue.

[Y]

[Y]

17

America to induce Israel to make concessions they did not have the means to evoke. Israel went along (and sometimes encouraged) such an American role to maintain the support of its principal friend.

On this occasion, the United States was on the sidelines, apparently uninformed[?] and emerging only at the end with a signing ceremony obscuring the fact that the most difficult road is still ahead.

The reasons for the near exclusion of the United States is the newness of the administration, the slowness in developing an American position, and the lack of confidence in America's ability to maintain secrets[?]. It is the second time that fear of American formalism has brought the Middle East parties together, for Sadat went to Jerusalem to avoid an American-sponsored general conference with all its rigidities.

X

[Y]

18

But there is no magic in a day-to-day American role. Indeed, if America comes up with all the formulations, it may perversely encourage irresponsibility. The parties may strike intransigent poses for their domestic opposition and maneuver America into forcing them into doing what deep down they know to be necessary. America can be proud of a consistent policy carried through six administrations of both parties which now enables the parties to assume a greater responsibility for the nitty-gritty of negotiations.

In the future, America has the following principal tasks:

19

X