A Deadlock Born of Rigidity

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is finally scheduled to meet with Clinton administration officials in Washington today, in what the White House calls a U.S. effort to go the extra mile in its quest for Middle East peace. The selflessness implied in that description is not without face-saving overtones.

President Clinton wanted to see Netanyahu in Washington two days ago, along with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, but only if the Israeli agreed beforehand to a U.S. proposal to yield another 13% of the West Bank to Palestinian control. Netanyahu chose to stay home, proclaiming that no one could dictate to Israel. Clinton, his bluff having been called, backed down. And so Netanyahu’s meeting today with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her top Middle East advisors will take place unconditionally, which means with little hope that it will help break the 15-month deadlock in Palestinian-Israeli talks.

For Netanyahu, who has never believed in the Oslo accords as a foundation for making peace with the Palestinians, the central and unchanging issue remains Israel’s security. He insists that Arafat must curb the anti-Israel activities of Palestinians in the territory under his control, a process that even Israeli defense minister Yitzhak Mordecai concedes has been well launched. But Netanyahu sees rigorous internal security controls as only partially meeting Israel’s needs.

Of paramount importance to the prime minister and his allies is control of territory. Israel has scattered settlements, some of them quite small, over the length and breadth of the West Bank. It wants these outposts protected under any peace agreement, and to assure their safety Israel insists that it must keep control of the roads leading to the settlements, the hills around them, the aquifers from which they draw water. The maps the Israeli government has prepared not surprisingly depict most of the West Bank as vital to Israel’s security needs. Put another way, the current Israeli government has no intention of letting any meaningful portion of the West Bank pass to Palestinian control, a rigidity that assures impasse.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be resolved only on the basis of a feasible partition of the West Bank and a host of built-in security guarantees. But the security guarantees that Netanyahu demands all but preclude the kind of territorial division that Palestinians could accept. That is why the deadlock endures. Don’t look for any early change.