Middle East dead end:

...The debate is urgently needed because U.S...

...The question is what the United States should do in the face of ambiguity...

...As always there are hopes (and fears) in the Middle East about what the United States will do...

...choices...

...The topic is the Middle East, more precisely the future direction of U.S...

...Equally significant for the U.S...

...The picture is more complex: the indigenous leaders have their own legitimacy, but they have tied themselves by public choice to the political direction of the PLO...

...and Israeli attempts to ignore and delegitimize its existence should call for reconsideration of a policy that has left the negotiating process and the United States at a dead end for several years now...

...policy has been at a dead end for much of the 1980s...

...Here the signal is lucid but the clarity may be damaging...

...As with all analogies the differences here predominate...

...The very persistence of the PLO in the face of U.S...

...The debate is inevitable because all the other major parties to the Middle East conflict are staking out their positions...

...policy debate is the Israeli election...

...The prospect of a Likud-religious right coalition government which would oppose both a "peace for territory" proposal and resist any discussion with the PLO presents a formidable obstacle, substantially and procedurally, to any Middle East peace initiative...

...The Algiers declaration had as its primary audience the U.S...

...The likely future in this case is a continuation of the intifada and a more violent Israeli response...

...The prospect of diplomatic gridlock and escalating violence in the occupied territories forms the background of the U. S. policy debate predicted at the outset of this column...

...Three component elements of the debate can be sketched...

...Here again Kissinger's legacy persists, for he made the commitment in 1974 that the U.S...

...But what policy perspective will the U.S...

...If one takes into account the context of the Palestinian decision (getting ready for a new round of diplomacy in the Middle East) as well as the content of the Algiers declaration, I believe the exegesis of the text signals a shift in the Palestinian position...

...reactions to their moves, but none of them is waiting for the United States to set the pace of policy developments in the region...

...While the Middle East issue is larger and more complex than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no other piece of the problem is so centrally located or will be so influential in its outcome...

...It may be helpful to remember an analogous instance during the Cuban missile crisis when Khrushchev sent a bellicose note and a diplomatic message to Kennedy within forty-eight hours...

...Writing two months prior to the Algiers meeting, Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg expressed the view that the PNC "will go to the brink of accepting the existence of Israel in language that the hardliners both in the PLO and Israel will not be able to dismiss-but only to the brink...

...Herewith an attempt to sketch the background to the new debate and to structure its questions...

...The Bush administration does not begin as President Reagan did in 1981 with a Middle East diplomatic process underway . From the U. S. side there is a need to build from the ground up and to do so in light of the recent moves sketched above...

...The debate will not be about these factors...

...We have debated the Middle East often in this country, but events now force us back to first principles...

...The PNC declaration surely met Hertzberg's expectation, and I believe went beyond it...

...The answer to this question awaits the debate forecast above...

...policy in the Middle East is its support for Israel...

...Kennedy reached for the diplomatic option and ignored the threatening note...

...If this more substantive debate emerges it will focus on a quote attributed to Henry Kissinger during his shuttle diplomacy, that the United States was committed to the defense of Israel's existence but not to its conquests...

...The PNC declaration may move-this debate from tactics to the substantive position of the Israeli government about future negotiations on the Middle East...

...The most contested aspect of U.S...

...The staunchly pro-Israel New Republic commented that "There are many ways to interpret the Israeli election results but all of them are gloomy...

...It is one way to pose U.S...

...The centrality of this distinction for United States policy has grown since it was first made...

...The most predictable aspect of U.S...

...The leaders of the intifada have not been the Palestinian leadership but the younger generation whose whole lives have been spent under Israeli occupation...

...policy is precisely where it will stand on direct negotiations with the PLO...

...The Middle East question was absent from the presidential campaign...

...would not deal with the PLO unless stringent conditions were met by them...

...The U.S determination to support the existence, defense, and well-being of Israel is beyond reasonable doubt...

...initiatives or U.S...

...disengagement is not good for the region or for the United States...

...The key actors who are structuring the Middle East question are the Israelis and the Palestinians...

...The Palestinian attempt to change the state of the question in the Middle East has had two phases...

...The inclusion of 242 in the text, by all indications, was purchased at the price of intense bargaining within the Palestinian leadership...

...But the lessons of the Cuban outcome may be helpful in addressing ambiguity...

...There is good evidence that the PLO leadership has been playing catch-up with the dynamic of the intifada...

...This raises the second phase of Palestinian activity: the meeting of the Palestinian National Council (PNC) announced the establishment of a Palestinian state, essentially within the boundaries of the occupied territories, and simultaneously made its most forthcoming acceptance yet of UN Resolutions 242 and 338...

...The ambiguity in the statement arises from the joining of 242 with other UN resolutions that undercut or erode the force of 242: the acceptance of Israel's de facto and de jure legitimacy in the Middle East...

...Each of them watches for U.S...

...WORLD WATCH J. Bryan Hehir MIDDLE EAST DEAD END TIME TO BACK OUT There is an inevitable and urgently necessary debate ahead for the United States...

...This does not mean, however, that the young Palestinians in the occupied territories can be separated from the PLO...

...A more serious problem is the fact that the United States has been a marginal actor in the Middle East (save for the Persian Gulf) for much of the last six years...

...It seems clear that continuing U.S...

...The first began unexpectedly in December 1987, the opening of the intifada, or the Palestinian uprising, in the West Bank and Gaza...

...The PNC's acceptance of 242 seems real and is ambiguous...

...Neither Palestinian ambiguity nor Israeli clarity is encouraging...

...bring to the problem...

...policy in the region...

...At the same time it is clear that the tactics of Israel's response to the intifada have generated a dramatic debate within the American Jewish community and among the American public...

...since this is not an issue normally handled with precision in political campaigns, its absence was a blessing...

...Secretary George Shultz's attempt to bar Yasir Arafat from speaking at the UN general assembly simply continues this misguided policy.isguided policy...

...The ambiguity of the PLO signal has been noted...

...government...